


Into the Dark

by kototyph



Series: Into the Dark [1]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M, Murder, Mystery, Suspense, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-25
Updated: 2012-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-30 03:38:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kototyph/pseuds/kototyph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spock might be Riverside's first ever vampire, but forgive Deputy Kirk for not being overly enthusiastic about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. At First Sight

**Author's Note:**

> **Content Advisory:** Vampires are prone to eating people and there are quite a few onscreen crime scenes and murders, so things will get a little gory. And, of course, this slash fiction, with all the trimmings and bells on.  
>  **Disclaimer:** This piece has a setting and storyline constructed from an unholy mashup of Charlaine Harris’s Dead Until Dark (the first book in the Southern Vampire Mysteries series) and the HBO show inspired by it, True Blood. Mad props and all due rights to Ms. Harris, and Mr. Roddenbury too while I’m at it.

Jim decided to let them stew a few minutes before climbing out of the squad car, grimacing as the muggy night air closed in over his head like dark, still water. The whole area needed a good soaking rain or three, had for weeks, but the channel ten weatherman had nothing but clear skies and sweltering heat indexes in his forecast. The dog days of June.

He kept his gait loose and easy, twirling his flashlight around a finger as he walked through drifting swarms of fireflies towards the sedan. He'd run the plates; they came back to some foreign-sounding name that meant nothing to him, the associated address from a big city back east—Baltimore, or Boston. It was a nice car, too— clean, only a few years old, shiny chrome and gleaming gray. In the stroboscopic red-blue, red-blue of his lights, he saw the passenger, a woman, lean over and say something terse and rapid to her as-yet invisible friend.

Could be lost motorists. The highway was a bit of a jog from here, true, but yuppie out-of-towners straying into city limits was hardly unheard of for Riverside. As he drew level with the driver's side door, he popped open the catch on his holster and tried to ignore the excited staccato beat of his pulse. Could be just yuppies. Could be.

The driver's window was still closed. He waited for a beat, and when the backlit silhouette behind the wheel gave no indication of moving, he knocked on the glass with the heavy head of his Maglite. "I'm gonna need you to open up, sir."

Nothing. Jim raised an eyebrow, then flicked on the light.

The man in the driver's seat didn't look up. He didn't even twitch at the sudden blinding brightness, just gazed out through the windshield like the dark corn fields held the secrets of the universe. Something about his fixed stare, blank black eyes in a blank white face, made Jim switch hands so his gun was clear. "Sir, I am not going to tell you again. Open up."

The passenger, at this angle still mostly out of view, put a small dark hand on the man's arm and said something soothing and indistinct. The man canted his head slightly towards her, and the window rolled itself down.

Jim ducked his head to peer inside, and met Nyota's defiant eyes. "Hello, deputy," she said.

Goddamnit. God _damn_ it.

He managed a tolerably civil, "Evening, miss," as he shone his flashlight quickly around the interior. It was as clean and neat inside as it was outside, beige-colored leather and floor mats uniformly spotless. Nyota was decked out in some fancy strapless thing he didn't recognize with matching ruby heels and a tiny clutch, the silent man beside her in a sports coat and tailored shirt unbuttoned at the throat. He had yet to so much as glance in Jim's direction. Ny was still trying to stare Jim down, her chin set mulishly and shoulders squared like she expected a fight.

It was hard to tell, but he thought he saw bruising on her wrists.

"And what might you two be doing out this late?" he asked, tone polite and even friendly.

Nyota held his eyes and lied without flinching. "Just driving home from a date, officer."

He bit back an angry retort and instead gave a slow, "Uh huh," wondering who the hell she thought she was fooling. Whatever was going on here, it was definitely not a date. "Had a little trouble at a bar just down the road," he said with a tight smile. "You folks aren't coming from there, by any chance?"

He was _not_ imagining the way Nyota's fingers tightened on the man's arm. "No, sir. Not us."

"Mmhm. Bar's called ' _Fang-tasia'_ ," he said, stretching out the syllables. "That ringing any bells?"

Her lips thinned. "I'm sorry, but I've never heard of it."

She glared at him and he stared at her, trying to sense what she wasn't telling him. Fact was, the Nyota Uhura he knew didn't go on _dates_ , was a shut-in when she wasn't working, was studying hard at the community college so she could transfer to Iowa State. She didn't get all dressed up and go places like this Fangtasia, where half the cocktails had that fake synthetic blood the Japanese were so proud of in them, and an evening's entertainment was trying to guess which of the other patrons might be the real undead deal.

But the biggest mystery of all was sitting between them, motionless as a marble angel in a graveyard. A looker, if you were into sculpture: dark hair, darker eyes, and a face that was beautiful but cold, not a hint of human warmth or personality to disturb its perfect symmetry. Jim kept the flashlight on Nyota and offered Mr. Stoic a flat grin. "And how about you? You've been awful quiet. Don't talk much?"

The silence stretched on a little too long before bloodless lips parted, and man replied, "I... am a man of few words," so low and soft Jim almost couldn't hear him over the crickets. But there was tension there, oh yes. This man was not happy.

"Hah, a man of few words." It was a struggle to keep his voice even and pleasant. "I like that." He turned abruptly back to Nyota and said, "I'd just like a closer look at your neck. If you don't mind, miss?"

Oh, she minded. If looks could kill, Deputy James T. Kirk would be a pile of melted slag on the roadside. "Of course not," she bit out. "Not at all." Slowly, she brushed her long hair back from her face.

Later, after he woke up facedown in the gravel with Nyota kneeling beside him, she'd apologize, tell him that it'd been a bad, weird night and her friend was angry and on edge and that he hadn't meant to hurt Jim. Jim would laugh, and tell her that of course he'd meant to. As it was, Jim had only the subtle tensing and minute shift in the man's weight to alert him that things were about to go sour.

"Why not ask for a closer look between her legs?" the man asked, voice utterly devoid of inflection.

Nyota's shocked "Spock!" overlapped Jim's hissed, " _Excuse me?_ "

The man inclined his head towards Jim, strange shadows moving over his features as he did so. "Many vampires express a preference for the femoral arteries that run between the inguinal ligament and adductor canal," he stated, as if reciting from a behavioral study. "Given their diameters, especially that of the _profunda femoris_ , once pierced the volume of blood lost per second is greater than even that of the carotid. It makes for easier feeding." He looked up, so that his face was suddenly illuminated by the full force of the flashlight and gleamed along the length of thin fangs. "Or so I've been told."

Jim couldn't deny having had his suspicions, but seeing those eyes, those _teeth_ , realizing what was within arm's reach of him— he had his gun in his hands and aimed at the vampire before he'd made the conscious decision to draw it. "Nyota! _Get out of the car!_ "

She said something that might have been _Jim, no!_ , but her voice was faint and fading quickly. The sounds of the summer night were dying away, crickets and cicadas and the susurrus of the wind being swallowed by a silence so thick and weighty it was almost tangible. In the absence of all other noise he became aware of his own heartbeat slowing, until it too came to a shuddering stop in his chest. Jim looked into the vampire's burning eyes and the world became that endless inky black, a sky without stars.

"I see you carry a nine millimeter. A Berretta, if I'm not mistaken."

What had been a perfectly ordinary voice now coiled and stroked over Jim like a physical entity, the sensation against his cheek so real he leaned into the caress, half-expecting to feel fingertips. He dimly heard himself sigh, "That's right."

"May I have it?"

_I want you to stop this, right now._ Nyota's words welled up from somewhere distant, but they were so unimportant they passed his ears without registering as speech.

Jim slowly nodded. "Sure. I guess."

The vampire opened his hand, and Jim set the gun butt first in his palm.

"Heavier than I imagined," the vampire mused, his eyes flicking away momentarily to study it, turning it this way and that under the steady beam of the flashlight. Freed for that brief second, Jim became momentarily aware of his aching lungs and drew a shuddering breath before the vampire looked up, pinning him in place. "Is it loaded?"

Jim blinked sluggishly. "Well, yes. Yes it is."

The barest glint of satisfaction flickered around the vampire's mouth. "Good." And he raised the gun until the barrel gently kissed Jim's forehead.

_Spock! Please, you have to stop. Let Jim go._

"Attend, Deputy Kirk," the vampire began, voice dropping into a basso purr of anger that rasped fur-like over Jim's skin. "I do not appreciate being accosted and questioned without due cause. I do not appreciate you insulting my female companion. And I do not appreciate you continuing to blind me with that abominably bright light."

The Maglite slipped from Jim's fingers and fell to the ground.

"I would suggest that in the future, should you suspect someone of being a vampire you very carefully consider the consequences of confronting them alone. They might not be as… _kind_ to you as I'm about to be."

_Please. Please, Spock._

"I am not going to kill you," the vampire continued, pulling the gun away from Jim's head. "I will even give you back your Berretta. In return, I would ask that you think on my advice and do yourself the favor of departing peacefully. Does that sound fair, deputy?"

It was a few moments before he realized a response was expected. "Yes."

"Yes, what?" the vampire asked mildly.

"Yes, sir."

_Spock, I'm done,_ Nyota said, so far away. _I'm getting out the car._ Jim was hazily aware of motion, of someone coming towards him in his peripheral vision.

"Please escort Miss Nyota home," the vampire said as he reached for Jim's still raised hand, placing the gun in his loosened grip and closing Jim's fingers around it. His own fingers were shockingly cold. "And have a pleasant evening, deputy."

"Okay," Jim mumbled, and felt himself start to fall.

When he came to, the sedan was gone and Nyota was sitting in the rocky dirt next to him, her pretty red dress getting dirty and her hose shredded at the knee.

"Ny?" he croaked.

She gave him a grim little smile. "Let's go home, Jim. We'll talk later."


	2. Second Impressions

" _Alright, deputies, you are now officially off shift. Have a nice night, y'all."_

With a grateful "Halle-fucking-luia," Jim fumbled for the dash radio and smacked the call button. "Copy that and thank you, Dispatch. Deputies Kirk and Chekov, over and out."

The fresh-faced boy next to him let out a little whoop and shimmied in his seat, grin bright and infectious even after their mutually and brutally exhausting twelve-hour shift. "This is best day of life!" the boy told him, eyes sparkling like they'd spent twelve hours at the goddamn amusement park. Jim gave him a long, tired glare, but it seemed to roll off his enthusiasm like mud off a duck. "Is _amazing!_ "

There wasn't anything to say to insanity like that, not when Jim had to privately admit to himself it was the most fun he'd had with a badge in months, so he just grumbled, "Watch the damn road," as the squad car started to slowly veer towards the median.

Chekov faced smartly forward, but couldn't seem to suppress himself. "I think, is duty, yes? Serve country and community, yes? I did not know that it would be so exciting!"

Jim slumped back into the worn leather bucket seat, letting his head roll against the window and watching the dark fields rush by. "I'd hate for you to get the wrong impression here," he drawled, "so let me go on record saying that finding the headquarters of a tri-state meth ring and chasing five kilos of the stuff clear into Missouri is _not_ a typical day at the Washington County sheriff's office." But by God, what a gloriously perfect clusterfuck it'd been: the shootout, the chase, that fucking _fire_. Somewhere a little outside Kalona, there was a house and a hundred thousand dollars worth of lab and product burning like a giant torch in the night. What a beautiful thought.

The road curved and dropped as they entered the river valley, and trees rose up to crowd up against the asphalt. Jim glanced out the windshield to get his bearings, then tapped Chekov's arm. "Hey, Russki, take a left here."

Chekov glanced over at him, confused. "But this is not the station, is it?" Even as he asked, he was slowing and signaling at the gravel turnoff.

"Nope. This is a bar, and I need a drink."

Scotty's Bar and Grill wasn't the only _decent_ bar in town, insomuch as it was the only bar in town, period— Riverside was many things, but a bustling metropolis was not one of them. There was a diner, a couple of dives up by the highway, and all the glitz and glamour of Iowa City just a twenty minute drive north, but if you wanted a quiet beer in a smoky corner here in town there was only the one option. Luckily for Riverside, then, Scotty's was a near-authentic Scottish pub run by a near-authentic Scotsman, whose only truly regrettable foible was a tendency to view paying customers as his personal culinary guinea pigs.

They followed a narrow road badly in need of repaving to a dingily-lit parking lot, reasonably full for the time of night—full enough that the spot with the rough, homemade 'Reserved for Law Enforcement' sign was one of the only ones available. The bar itself was a small building almost swallowed by reedy cottonwoods and marsh grass, badly in need of paint and a bit of landscaping. Scotty had bought the long-vacant property nearly a decade ago, but looking at the sagging shutters and broken shingles you sure wouldn't know it. In the orange glare of the single lamppost, it looked derelict but for the toffee-colored light escaping through the checkered-glass windows.

"Is a bar?" Chekov asked dubiously as they stepped out of the car.

Jim chuckled. "Scotty isn't one for topiary."

They were almost to the door when it swung open, muffled music and conversation swelling. Jim looked up and met Nyota's startled eyes as she froze in the motion of sweeping dirt over the threshold, and that thing he'd been trying so very hard not to think about every second since the sun went down was suddenly palpable in the air between them.

Chekov, bless his little Russki heart, immediately proffered a hand and said, "Hello, miss! I am Deputy Pavel Andreievitch Chekov!"

Nyota's eyes held Jim's for a moment longer before dropping to Chekov, to whom she offered a wan smile and her own hand. "Nice to meet you, deputy. I'm—"

"This is my very good friend Nyota Uhura, Chekov." Jim turned to wrap an arm around her shoulders and grinned like he couldn't feel her stiffening against him. "I haven't seen her in a while, as it happens. Why don't you go on in? Save me a seat and I'll catch up in a moment."

Chekov's eyes flicked curiously between them, but he nodded. " _Okei_." The boy gave Uhura another sunny smile and stepped around them to make his way inside.

The second he was past the interior door Nyota jerked herself away from Jim and started her sweeping again, swift vicious swipes like the dirt had personally offended her. He let her work, leaning back against the worn siding and staring out into the sooty blackness beyond their little half-circle of lamplight.

"Y'know, Ny, it's been years since I've slept with the lights on and a gun under my pillow, but there's just something about your new friend that makes it seem like a great idea."

She huffed out what might have been the start of a protest, but chose to purse her lips and continue her vitriolic sweeping instead of answering.

He looked over at her. "You've been avoiding me for days."

She glanced at him, nettled. "I'm not avoiding you, Jim. I'm busy."

"You said we'd talk about this."

She shook her head, a stubborn glint in her eye as she set the broom aside and knelt to grab the rug. "What more is there to talk about? You won't listen. I told you, Spock..." Her voice drifted off. "He's my— my friend. He's a good man, Jim."

_Spock_ , Jim filed away for future reference. "When he isn't being an undead bloodsucking freak, sure, why the hell not?" he agreed magnanimously. Not exactly politically correct terms for America's newly-emancipated nonliving population, but fuck him if he cared. He must have missed that day of the academy's 'Embracing Diversity' seminar.

"Jim, look, he's just..." She sighed. "He's lonely."

He couldn't stop the disbelieving snort. "Lonely? If the thing's so lonely, it can go back wherever the hell it came from. Don't they all live together in nests or burrows or something?"

Nyota slung the rug over the railing and started half-heartedly tapping the dust out with her broom. "He says he can't anymore, so he's going to try mainstreaming. Living like a human," she clarified when he shot her a blank look. "I met him when he came into the bar a few weeks ago. No one so much as looked at him sideways, but I knew… I knew what he was."

Jim didn't ask how she knew. The crazy thing was that sometimes Ny just _did_. But— "Weeks," he said faintly. He wondered if the good folks of Riverside knew they'd been rubbing elbows with a vampire for _weeks_.

Nyota gave him an exasperated eye-roll. "Yes, weeks. He said his mother's people used to live in the area, and he's purchased their ancestral home."

"Any idea where?" he asked, as casually as he could.

"If I knew, I wouldn't tell you," she said tartly.

"Nyota," he snapped, "I'm worried about you. Vampires are dangerous."

She mutely shook her head, putting up a hand to hold off his angry " _Ny!"_

"I know what he is. Believe me, I do. I've met— well. I was at Fangtasia. I saw what other vampires can be like. But he is _not like them_ ," she said, her voice rising as Jim tried to speak over her again. "He's not—"

She took a deep breath, and let it out on another unsteady sigh.

"Jim," she said seriously. "Spock is the gentlest, most courteous man I've ever met." She was looking up at him now, willing him to understand. "And he's never made me feel— unsafe. He is what he is, but I am what I am, too. I know what it's like to be the outsider, and I can sympathize. I'm just trying to make him feel welcome here."

Jim stared at her. "Are you… have you—? Oh, no. No, no, _no._ Damn it, Nyota!"

"What?"

"You can't—" He searched for the word. " _Like_ him," he said finally, with real horror. "Even if you leave out that _he's a goddamn vampire_ and that he took you to a fucking _vampire bar_ , he's still got all the personality of a dead fish and he tried to kill me!"

"He _did not_ ," she snarled back. "And I _asked_ him to take me to Fangtasia, Jim, and—"

"Wait," he interjected. "Wait just a fucking minute. You asked him to take you there?"

"I thought I could help," she said, voice defensive. "You know how I… hear things. Sometimes. Marlena and Janice were nice girls, Jim, and they didn't deserve to die like that. I thought I owed it to them to at least try."

"Let me see if I've got this straight," he said slowly, his voice rising with each word. "You, a young woman, went with a vampire, to a vampire bar, to look into the murders of young women, _by a suspected vampire killer_?" He was shouting by the end. "Are you _crazy_?"

"Shut up!" she yelled back at him. "I didn't know it would be like that! And I didn't know you were going to raid the place! He protected me in the bar, almost got arrested when he's been trying so hard fit in here and _then_ ," she said, jabbing him in the chest, "And then, Mr. Sheriff's Deputy had to go and be all macho and necrophobic, and insult me, which, by the way, I still haven't forgiven you for, and I really can't blame Spock for losing his temper after all of that, I really can't.

"Now, if you will _excuse_ _me_ ," she said in a low poisonous hiss, shoving him away from her, "I have work to do." She yanked the rug off the porch railing and let it flop over the floor, stomping it flat on her way back into the bar. He lunged after her, but she dodged neatly between two drunks just leaving. They saw Jim's uniform and froze like rabbits in a spotlight, completely blocking the entrance. Damn it.

"I guess you boys must be walking home," Jim said, baring all his teeth in a fierce grin.

"Uh, yes sir, officer," said the tallest, the fear of God in his eyes. "S'not that far, anyhow. Right, Bubba?"

"Nossir," agreed the shorter. "Real close."

"Well, don't let little old me slow you down," he said, stepping aside to let them pass. "Have a nice night, gentlemen."

The dismissal took a minute to percolate through their pickled brains, but then they were stumbling off into the night. He waited until they were safely out of earshot before releasing swearing, and allowed himself one hard kick to the crumbling vine-covered siding. A piece of paneling splintered off under the toe of his boot, and he let out one more oath.

* * *

Scotty's was a great deal bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside; it was an easy enough illusion to create when the only portions of your establishment clearly visible through the weeds and trees were the windows and doors. Scotty had built with what he had, which wasn't much, but for a bar in the middle of Iowa scrub the place truly did have all the dark and smoky charm of a Scottish public house. There were a few stuffed deer heads for fun, some darts and a battered pool table in the corner. Miles of colored glass and blackened oak paneling gave the place a cheery evening feel even in broad daylight.

Predictably, as soon as he felt human enough to come inside, the first thing that greeted Jim was Gaila's long, disapproving stare. She was across the room and tending to customers, so she settled for mouthing "Later" and motioned him on.

As Jim approached the long scarred bar in back, the bartender glanced up from the pitcher he was pouring and gave him a rueful but welcoming smile. "Dude, I like you and all, but sometimes it would be nice to go a day _without_ seeing you. Seriously."

Hikaru Sulu was Jim's regular partner, when Jim wasn't being the training wheels to Chekov's shiny new bicycle, and when he was off shift the man moonlighted at Scotty's for extra cash. Between work and the bar, Sulu and Jim probably spent more time together than most married couples.

"Don't even start with me," Jim warned, slumping into the seat next to Chekov and rubbing a hand over his face. "Whiskey, now. God."

"Dunna give him th' good stuff," Scotty said as he passed behind Sulu to get to the till. "A face like tha' needs our cheapest swill and lots of it."

Sulu set an empty glass in front of him and went to grab the bottle. Lowest shelf, Jim noted balefully.

"So-o," Scotty said, slamming the drawer closed and leaning in close. "Ahm going te go out on an investigative limb here, seein' as ye're obviously in a pisser and Miss Uhura streaked by into the back without a word, and say that th' te of ye had a bit of a disagreement in my parking lot."

Jim let his head fall into his hands. "Just pour the drinks, barkeeps."

Scotty gave him a sympathetic smack on the shoulder and a, "Tha's th' spirit, lad. Sulu, I'll be a' home if ye need me." Scotty lived on the property, in a trailer out back surrounded by half-wreaked engines and other 'projects'. Definitely a man after Jim's own heart.

They all said their goodbyes and when Chekov joined in with " _Dasvidniye_!", Jim was suddenly reminded that he'd pushed his county's newest deputy into a bar full of strangers. Jim glanced over and was glad to see the boy staring interestedly back, nursing what looked like a Shirley Temple with five extra cherries.

"Everything is good, sir?"

Jim gave a tired smile. "Everything's just dandy, Chekov." The first sip of whiskey burned, and Jim coughed. "As your superior officer, let me give you some free advice that'll save you a lot of troubles: do not have sisters."

"Is too late," the boy informed him cheerfully, sucking on his teetotaler special through a bright purple straw. "I have the one in Russia and the one who was adopted with me here. Miss Uhura, she is your sister?"

"In all the ways that count, unfortunately."

"And she is being angry because…?"

Jim winced. "Not a good topic of conversation just now."

"I'll say," Gaila agreed as she slid back onto the stool next to Jim. She leaned against the bar with her elbows on the polished cherry finish, tilting her head so that her gorgeous waterfall of russet hair pooled alluringly on the dark wood. "'Karu, can I get two G&Ts and one of those Red-Headed Sluts?" She licked her lips suggestively.

Chekov's look of perpetual earnestness went slightly glazed, but Sulu just rolled his eyes and reached for the cranberry juice. Gaila blew him a kiss and turned her attention to Jim, running a finger down his arm. "I don't know what you said to piss her off," she said conversationally. "But it must have been a doozy."

Jim made an angry, abortive gesture with his drink. "I'm just worried about her."

Gaila smiled wryly. "Yeah. That'd do it."

"Did she tell you she was doing any of this?" he demanded, lowering his voice. "Did you know she was seeing that— thing?"

"Whoa there, tiger," she said coolly. "You might want to be more careful with your words."

He gave her a hard look, which got a raised eyebrow in return. "And why might that be?"

Just as the last word slipped from his lips, he felt the oddest sensation— like someone just behind him had exhaled softly against the nape of his neck. Every muscle in his body tried to tense, and went loose and fluid instead.

From much, much further away than the next stool over, Gaila said, _Because tall, dark and broody himself just walked in, and I think he may have heard you._

* * *

"Okay, Nyota just brought him a second bottle, and— yeah, Nancy is definitely sliding into his booth," Sulu said _sotto voce_ as he polished the patch of bar in front of Jim for the third time in as many minutes. "I actually feel bad for the vamp. Dr. Crater's okay, but his wife is such a skank."

"She is giving him the show," Chekov added in a stage whisper, eager to contribute to the covert surveillance. "Her shirt, it is very tight."

The object of Jim's nightmares looked very different in the warm yellow light of Scotty's. Of course, Jim was limited to what Sulu and Chekov told him and the distorted miniature he could see in the circular mirror that hung above the bar. The very thought of so much as turning his head in the vampire's direction made his heart speed to a hummingbird flutter in his throat. As much as it stung his pride, he still couldn't make himself look, let alone get off his stool and confront the thing.

Nyota's Spock had once been a very tall and thin man, and was now a very tall and thin vampire, eternally expressionless and dressed in somber, funereal colors. He really was the stereotypical image of a Bram Stoker bloodsucker—pale as death and just as welcoming. Despite that, and despite the very obvious fact that he was drinking blood out of a glass bottle, the man had somehow managed to attract the friendship of Mrs. Nancy Crater. Jim knew her as a resident of Glasgow Street, recently moved from Ames. Dr. Robert Crater, a former professor at the university there, was well-liked and respected in town, but his wife left something to be desired; even the matrons of the Ladies Auxiliary to the Veterans of Foreign Wars had not seen fit to invite her to join the club, a major social shunning in a town as small as Riverside. There were rumors she had a sordid past that the Craters had moved to Riverside to escape.

"Oh my God," Sulu said baldly, not even pretending not to stare anymore. "She's all overhim. That woman is old enough to be my mother!"

"Miss Uhura is unhappy," Chekov observed.

Miss Uhura was in fact unhappy enough to forget she was rabidly angry at Jim. She flounced over from taking Nancy's order to the bar in a minute later, smacking her tray down and gritting out, "Another Smirnoff Raspberry, please. And spit in it."

"Can do," Sulu said with equanimity, and went to grab one out of the cooler.

"Your boyfriend playing around on you?" Jim managed to ask her. It was difficult to even talk, imagining he could feel that cool dark stare on the back of his head.

Her glower could have peeled paint, and her tone was scathing. "I don't expect you to understand this, but Spock is still adjusting to human cultural norms. He doesn't want to offend people, and so he tends to err on the side of politeness— a tactic you might consider adopting, _deputy_."

"Because he was being ever so polite when he suggested I check your crotch for bite marks," Jim retorted.

"One Smirnoff Raspberry, spat in as proscribed," Sulu said with relish. "And what about crotches?"

Nyota snapped, "Nothing!" just as Chekov said, "Ah, excuse me?"

They all looked at the Russian, who had his hand raised as primly as grade-schooler in math class. When he saw he had their attention, he pointed towards the vampire's table and said, "I would just like to point out that Mrs. Crater and Mr. Vampire have left."

Nyota spun around and stared, along with everyone else. Then she was abandoning her tray and all but running for the door, and Jim was following her after a cursory order to Chekov to "Stay put, I'll be back."

He caught up with her just outside the door with a hand on her arm and hauled her struggling body around to face him. "Calm the fuck down, Ny! What is it? What's the matter?"

"Something bad is going to happen, Jim," she gasped, a little wild-eyed. "I can feel it. That bitch is going to hurt him."

"Hurt hi—?" Jim started. "Hurt the _vampire_? Because yeah, that seems real likely."

"You don't understand," she said, switching abruptly from fighting to clinging to his uniform lapels. "I saw it in her head. I don't know how, but she's planning on hurting him, maybe killing him and I can't just let it happen!"

Sometimes he forgot. Jim had known Nyota Uhura for most of his life, and for most of the time he'd known her she'd been an outcast in Riverside: a skinny little black girl, abused by her parents and ostracized by her classmates because she knew things she wasn't supposed to. Half the town had thought she was crazy or just mentally handicapped, before she'd learned to stop telling people their own secrets.

"Listen, Ny," he said, gentling his tone. "Listen to me— and this goes for snooping around vampire bars too, y'hear?"

He waited until she nodded. "I am an officer of the law, and it's my job to stop murderers." _Even if they're bent on killing people that are technically already dead._ "So why don't you let me handle this? If Nancy's got something evil on her mind, I've got a badge and a gun. You've got neither. Let me do this."

Nyota's eyes searched his face, and whatever she saw there— or in his head— had her giving an unsteady nod.

"Now go back inside."

She went, reluctantly, and Jim turned on his heel to survey Scotty's parking lot.

It was completely empty of vampires, or anyone else for that matter. Of course. That would have been too easy. Jim fumbled his keys out of his pocket and unlocked the squad car, leaning in boot up the MDT. He stood outside the car and tapped his foot impatiently as the terminal booted up, one eye on the woods surrounding the lot and the other on the screen as the display whirred and chugged and finally spat out a welcome message.

Professor Crater, forty-six years old, had no criminal history and a 2002 black Buick Regal registered to him. It was parked a few cars down from him, and a cursory glance confirmed it to be completely devoid of either Crater or the vampire. He cleared the professor's data, typed in Nancy's name, and after a few moments of squalling and grinding her record popped up.

"Well, haven't you been naughty?" he mumbled, scrolling through the charges. Most were depressingly recent and nearly all originated in Ames. Drug paraphernalia and distribution seemed to be the common theme, mostly meth and cocaine, but one of the very last charges leapt out at him as he scrolled past it and he swore, loudly.

Nancy Crater's last arrest had been logged two months ago— specifically, under suspicion for being under the influence of vampire blood.

* * *

People who think the state of Iowa is nothing but endless rolling acres of corn and soybeans would be, on the whole, about 95% correct. What they discount are the rivers that wind through the fields, carving wide, wooly valleys where the forests are as thick as any weald on the west coast. Scotty's was deep in the dense cordon of trees that ran along the banks of the English River, which, granted, did not cut as fine a figure nor deep a chasm as the Missouri on the western border of the state— but Jim was still easing downhill at a forty-five degree angle, following a trail he half thought he was imagining through the nigh-impassable swamp brush.

He heard Nancy before he saw her, a high gibbering wail of " _Hurry, please, I want it, I need it I needitneeditneedit_ ", and found he was not at all surprised to hear her husband's lower, calmer voice answer her.

Like most things vampire-related, the recent spike in vamp blood as a recreational drug was new, glamorous and extremely hazardous to the user. Jim had heard all kinds of stories about it, besides the obvious assertion that drinking it turned you into one of the undead. It was hellishly expensive and hard to get, because even before vampires had become full citizens and _hunting_ had become _murder_ , they'd objected strenuously to the practice. Robert Crater was up for some supremely devoted husband awards if he was doing what Jim thought he was.

A few more yards and Jim could see Nancy, shaking like the strung-out junkie she was and pacing back and forth in the loamy sand of the riverbank. He pulled a few reeds out of his way and saw Robert kneeling over a prone figure that could only be the vampire, working with brisk, efficient movements. Whatever he was doing, it was enough to draw a deep, pained moan from the figure on the ground.

Well, damn. Jim rocked back on his heels and settled a hand on his gun, considering his options. While he personally felt that one less vampire in the world would be just peachy and had specifically wished this particular vampire dead a multitude of times, something in him recoiled at the thought of just standing by and letting this happen. To anyone.

Out in the clearing, the vampire made another low sound of agony, and Jim drew his Beretta. The law at least was clear. On paper, murdering a vampire was just as wrong as murdering anyone else, and when he told Nyota he was an officer of that law, he'd meant it.

"Stop what you're doing and put your hands in the air!" he said, clear and loud and he rose to his feet.

Their reactions were instantaneous. Dr. Crater dropped what he was holding and looked shocked, then ill in the Maglite's beam, and Nancy spun to face him, saw the gun and hissed, " _No,"_ her face twisted and feral.

"Back away from the man, Mrs. Crater," Jim ordered, stepping out of the brush and slowly closer.

" _I'll kill you!"_ she promised on a shriek, hands curving into claws. "I'll rip open your neck and drink you _dry!_ "

The vampire on the ground was obviously hurting, if the strained arch of his back and bared teeth were anything to go by, but Jim kept his eyes on the Craters as he circled around and forced them back, away from the river. The professor seemed to realize his number was up, but Nancy… her expression wasn't human, all wild-eyed want and sick hunger. She snarled open-mouthed at him, like a rabid animal, and only her husband's grip on her wrist seemed to be keeping her at bay.

Jim stepped on a bag full of… something liquid and it popped under his heel. She _howled_ , lurching forward as if to try to save the remaining bags, and Jim put a warning put in the weeds just beyond her head. "Leave it!"

For one crazy moment, he thought she'd try anyway. There was hardly any sanity left in her eyes, a completely different creature than the one that had simpered and fawned over the vampire in Scotty's. Jim stared her down over the barrel of the Berretta, and growled, "I said _leave it."_

"But I need it!" she screamed, crazed, red-rimmed eyes opened wide. "I _need_ it! Robert! _Robert!_ "

The man gazed at Jim in quiet desperation, eyes flicking rapidly between the gun and his face. "Leave the blood," Jim repeated, low and deadly serious. "Both of you are under arrest for abduction and attempted murder. Kneel, now, with your hands on your head, fingers laced together." Shitshitshit, he only had one set of cuffs on him. He needed a hand free to use the radio on his shoulder, but that meant choosing between the light and the gun.

Dr. Crater seemed to realize his difficulty a split second after Jim did. Faster than he'd thought the man could move, he'd hauled himself and his now-sobbing wife into the thick marsh scrub. Jim swore and launched himself forward, but they were gone.

He dropped the flashlight and grabbed blindly for his radio. "Dispatch!" he yelled into the dark. "Deputy Kirk with two 10-29Fs, identified as Dr. Robert and Nancy Crater. Felony 217. Suspects are fleeing on foot from the river towards Scotty's Bar and Grill, where they have parked a vehicle. Dispatch, do you copy, over?"

The silence before the " _Copy_ _that, Deputy Kirk. Assistance en route, over_ " was long and deafening. Only then did he thumb the safety on and hostler the gun, fumbling over the invisible ground for his flashlight.

Funny, how he'd forgotten until this second exactly what the Craters were leaving him the dark _with_. But they had it— him— tied down, right? Somehow. And Jim was a grown man. He wasn't scared of the dark, or monsters under the bed, no matter what kind of crazy dreams he'd been having.

Still, when his hand finally closed over the slim metal grip of the Maglite, he breathed out a huge sigh of relief.

He swallowed, and slowly pivoted to shine the bright beam over the gaunt form sprawled in the sand. The vampire didn't seem bound by any conventional means, but he wasn't moving at all beyond weak tremors. Heavy ropes of silvery chain lay lightly draped over his limbs, and as Jim edged closer, he saw with fascinated horror that the skin smoked faintly where it touched the silver.

Very gingerly, Jim knelt at the vampire's side. He was aware that the other's eyes had fluttered open and were staring up at him, and he paused, hand hovering over the smooth surface of the links. Did he really want to do this?

"Please," the vampire whispered.

Jim's gaze rose of its own accord, skating up the tense lines of the vampire's torso and stopping just short of his face, wary of those hypnotic eyes. "Tell me what to do."

"... off," the vampire breathed. "Please."

It was queasy business, pulling the thick chain out of scorched flesh. The marks it left were raw and oozing the same dark liquid that filled the bags scattered across the riverbank. Jim wondered if vampires could drown, if the Craters planned to roll the vampire straight into the water after they'd finished with him.

"Needles," the man gasped, after all the chain was pulled free. Dr. Crater had obviously been pilfering supplies from the university's medical school— the blood bags were professional grade, marked for transfusion— but the needles were huge, nothing he'd ever seen in a hospital before. Jim had to swallow back bile at the sizzling sound they made as he pulled them free, and he tossed them as far away as he could, along with the bags they'd been attached to.

With the last of the needles gone, the vampire visibly relaxed into the soft sand, arms falling to his sides and eyes sliding closed. For a moment, Jim thought he might have passed out.

"Hey. Spock, right?"

At the sound of his name, the vampire's eyes opened and he refocused on Jim's face.

Jim kept his own eyes on the vampire's shirt collar, just in case. "Do you need—? I can call for an ambulance. Or something."

The vampire gave him the barest of headshakes.

Jim licked his lips nervously and offered, "Do you, ah… maybe you want me to leave?"

This time the headshake was more definite. "No," the vampire whispered, voice scratchy and thin. "I do not... I am not strong enough, to fend them off. If they return..."

When Jim nodded, the vampire closed his eyes again, and for a while the only noises on the riverbank were the static-laden squawks of police chatter from Jim's radio, as units responded to his call for backup.

"I can't believe Bones actually dated that woman," he muttered finally, mostly to himself.

"Who... is Bones?" the vampire rasped, and Jim started guiltily.

"Ah, well," Jim said awkwardly. "He's a friend, lives in town. He, uh, told me once that he used to date Nancy, when they both lived in Georgia." And Bones had loudly exclaimed what a small fucking world it was, that they'd managed to meet again in a podunk town like Riverside.

Strangely enough, Spock seemed to be attempting to carry on a conversation with him. "She is... much changed from when he knew her?"

Jim laughed a little despite himself. "That's putting it mildly. I think he would have mentioned if she'd been a lunatic v-juice junkie."

The vampire seemed to be recovering more the longer he lay there, at least enough to speak in complete sentences. "The effects of vampire blood can be… unusual. It drives most mad, from what I have seen, but in some it can heal disease and increase attractiveness." He regarded Jim solemnly. "As a reward for saving my life, I freely offer you the blood they have taken."

"Mr. Spock…" Jim said slowly, an edge of hysterical laughter threatening to burst free, "Are you calling me ugly?"

Wonder of wonders, the vampire's marble face managed to look embarrassed. "This was not my intention at all. I find you to be an exemplary member of your species."

Jim stared very hard at the edge of that collar, stiff and dark with blood. "That's… awfully nice of you to say."

He was spared more hideously awkward compliments by the sudden, " _Deputy Kirk, what's your 20, over?_ " that crackled over his radio. He grabbed gratefully for the distraction.

"Dispatch, this is Deputy Kirk. My 20 is on the riverbank, approximately fifty yards directly downhill from Scotty's Bar and Grill, over."

" _Copy that, deputy. Deputies Chekov and Giotto at the bar and proceeding to your 20, over_."

"Dispatch, were the suspects apprehended, over?"

A pause. " _That's a negative, Deputy Kirk. The suspects' vehicle was reported missing from the lot and officers are now continuing on to their home address, over_."

Just as his thumb pressed the call button to respond, Jim heard a faint shout and some crackling in the underbrush uphill. He yelled out a loud, "Marco!" and grinned when someone bellowed back, "Shut the fuck up, Kirk!"

The laughter went right out of him when he turned around and saw the vampire was gone, as suddenly and silently as if he'd evaporated into thin air.


	3. Dreams and Reality

_Three Years Ago_

It was nearly four in the morning when the Greyhound finally rumbled to a stop outside the Grabbit Kwik at Route 22 and I-80. Jim, who had slid into a light doze sometime before they crossed the border, was jostled into consciousness by someone's duffel bag smacking him in the face.

"Sorry, man," someone said, and then they were moving past him. Jim lifted his head and blinked around owlishly as the cabin lights came on and more people began to pile into the aisle.

A glance out the window confirmed that they'd reached the Route 217 exit, the closest to home he was going to get, and so he muffled his wide yawn with a fist and began the delicate process of easing his shoulder out from under his seatmate's scruffy cheek. The poor guy looked rough, tired and road-battered enough that Jim hadn't had the heart to wake him after the third time his head drifted to rest on Jim's collarbone. He felt doubly guilty when even his careful movements startled the man awake with a gruff "Hngh?" Bloodshot eyes focused groggily on him and then away, the man grumbling an indistinct apology.

It was late March in Iowa, which should in theory have meant weather gentle as a lamb but had actually manifested as ice crystals stinging against Jim's cheeks like tiny razors, driven by a harsh wind from which his thin leather jacket offered no protection. He slung his battered backpack higher and jogged the fifty feet to the gas station, already mentally debating which of his local ladies might be best to call for a ride and a proper welcome-home fuck. Actually, now that he thought of it, didn't sweet little Marlena work at the Grabbit Kwik? If she was working tonight she was definitely top of his list, with those pretty doe-eyes of hers. First things first, though; he was two steps and one bad joke away from pissing his pants.

Jim Kirk liked to travel light, or rather, he didn't really care about material possessions and tended not to miss them after his carelessness resulted in their disappearance. While patting his hands dry he discovered that once again, he'd lost his phone, and instead of rushing back onto the bus to scour the seats and the floor he wistfully resigned himself to a cold and lonely night on the highway— at least until George got the message he'd leave from the Grabbit-Qwik's payphone and Aurelan guilted him into picking up his baby brother, even though it was an hour's drive from the university.

When Jim strode whistling out of the restroom to place the call, he was surprised to see his bleary-eyed seatmate from the bus standing in front of the coffee drink display, glowering uncomprehendingly at the scores of shiny metal spigots and levers. He had a 32-ounce Jumbo Gulp cup clutched in both hands like a talisman to ward off the demons of sleep, if only he could find the right tap.

"Me, I'd stay clear of the froo-froo stuff," Jim offered. "Truckers don't drink that crap and the attendants get lazy. Never clean the machines."

"Don't recall askin' your advice," the man growled, southern accent as tar-thick as blackstrap molasses on his lips.

"It's free," Jim answered impishly. "Regular roast's to your left there."

In the merciless florescent light of the gas station, Rhett the Grouch looked surprisingly less disreputable; only real linen and cotton could wrinkle like that, after all, and the creases in his pants were still sharp as razor blades. He'd brought in his wallet and nothing else, Jim noted, meaning he was continuing on to more westerly climes. Des Moines? Omaha? Who the hell knew.

Jim grabbed a portable cup himself and found the French Roast, while the man from Dixieland scanned the left side of the counter hazily. He couldn't resist a further, "Down one. Over one more. That's it."

The man's scowl deepened, but his mouth crooked a tiny fraction of an inch and when the coffee startled flowing he sighed rapturously.

"Name's James Kirk," Jim announced, offering him a hand. "I prefer Jim."

The man sized him up over the rim of his Big Gulp before taking the hand and shaking it firmly. "Dr. Leonard McCoy, at your service."

Jim rested a hip on the counter and said, "Hey, doc, if you've got the money for a taxi, we can get out of this awful weather and I'll put you up for the night."

McCoy's eyes narrowed faintly. "That's awful kind of you, Mr. Kirk, but I've got a ways yet to go on that damn bus, and I don't want to spend a minute longer on the road then I have to."

Jim smiled. "I just thought I'd offer, seeing as that bus you love so much rolled out two minutes ago."

One glance out the window proved it true, and proved that the good doctor McCoy could cuss a blue streak wider than the Mississippi.

* * *

Those half-remembered curses lingered in his head as he was jolted straight from dreams into reality by the frame-rattling bangs shaking his door. "Jim, you lazy ass, aren't you up yet?"

As soon as he had the presence of mind to, he yelled, "Goddamn it, Momma, it's my day off!" It came out a bit muffled, as he neglected to lift his head from the pillow it was mashed in to answer her.

"I don't give a rat's ass if it's your day off or Good fucking Friday!" Winona shouted, the full edge of her wicked temper softened by the old plaster walls and sturdy oak door. "It's almost noon and you're changing the oil in the Jeep today!"

Goddamn military mothers who still kept goddamn military hours. Jim had dragged his aching body into bed just as the sun had started shining. He felt like he's gone ten rounds with Andre the Giant, having spent his night slogging through mud and rushes with the rest of the department as they combed the river for the vampire and the Craters—something Winona _knew_ , damn it, she'd been up and on her second cup of coffee when he'd crawled in the front door. She'd had the gall to laugh at his sorry ass.

"James Tiberius Kirk! FRONT AND CENTER!"

The navy had done him no favors when it finally removed Admiral Kirk from active duty.

"I'm up, I'm fucking _up,"_ he groaned, rolling onto his back and rubbing at his gummy eyes. The sunlight, it burned.

"Lunch is on the stove,"was her only answer, and he heard the floorboards creak as she walked away, apparently satisfied.

When Jim had first returned to Riverside after years of footloose travel and then three attending the police academy, the Kirk house had stood empty for a decade. He and Sam had lived there off and on with their grandparents, dropped off like so much extra weight while their mother shipped out to less child-friendly climes. Jim had always remembered the farmhouse as crowded and noisy and charmingly kitschy, but he'd found it clean as Mother Hubbard's cupboard. Tiberius and Mary Kirk had quietly passed away within months of each other, and a few elderly aunts had methodically stripped the house bare, with Winona's full blessing. He might have protested if he'd known, but from ages fifteen through twenty Jim Kirk had pretty much fallen off the face of the earth. Even he didn't remember all the places he'd been.

He'd worked on the house pretty much incessantly, that first year back when he was still adjusting to the job and the small town and living like a responsible adult. He'd painted the walls and refinished the floors, and Sam had snuck around behind his back to force furniture that matched on him. Aurelan, then pregnant with George III, had snuck behind both their backs to make new appliances magically appear in the empty spaces between the cabinets.

Jim had been settling into a comfortable, if a bit lonely, confirmed bachelorhood rattling around a huge old farmhouse, wondering if he should get a dog or maybe try to keep a woman around longer than a weekend. Then he'd answered a routine domestic and found Nyota locked in her father's closet, hands belted together and her face a mess of old and new bruises. Less than a month after that, Winona had shown up on his doorstep with her sea bag on her shoulder and a tired, sour scowl, retired kicking and screaming after thirty years of service.

And that was how Jim Kirk, bad-ass sheriff's deputy and one sexy motherfucker, had found himself living platonically with one of the hottest girls in town, and his mom.

At least he'd kept the master suite on the first floor, so he could stumble naked out of bed and into the bathroom without offending anyone's delicate feminine sensibilities. He'd barely sluiced off last night so he took his time now, letting the stinging hot water sooth sore muscles and unglue his eyelids from each other. Fuck mornings, anyway, but bless Aurelan's practical little heart for the new, massive water heater in his basement.

He could hear muted voices from the kitchen as he toweled off, pulling on grease-monkey jeans and a white tee he might have worn in high school. He heard a high-pitched giggle as he stepped out into the hall, and then Joanna was running around the corner and tackling him like a midget linebacker in pink overalls.

Instantly, his morning got better. "Heyheeey, its Jojo! What're you doing here, babycakes?" He grabbed her tight in a bear hug, swinging her around a few times before setting her down again. She immediately reattached herself, winding her arms and legs around his waist like a koala.

"Ms. Winnie's gonna babysit me 'cause daddy's working," she informed him, and shrieked with laughter as he bounced down the hall and she slid to his knees. "Faster!"

Bones was sitting at the table with a plate of something black and lumpy and what was probably his seventh or eighth mug of coffee, raising his eyebrows at Jim and the gap-toothed terror still wound around his legs. "Joanna, darlin', leave the man be."

She released him with a giggle and Jim eased himself into a chair with a wince. "Ow. Ouch."

Bones set his mug down as Jo scrambled around the table to climb into his lap, wrapping an arm around her. "What, not sleeping well, princess?"

Jim groaned. "Not hardly. I had a hell— a heck of a night," he amended quickly as Jo beamed across the table at him. "I must have crawled through every inch of woods within a two mile radius of the river. Twice."

"I heard," Winona said, sliding over Jim's very own plate of Black and Lumpy. "Robert Wesley stopped me out by the road on my way to get the mail, wanted to gossip."

The Kirk farmstead was over a hundred years old, the property bought in 1892 by thrifty Englishman Billy Kirk, and in their heyday Billy's children had owned most of the acreage south of the river. By the time the farm passed to Jim's grandfather, there wasn't much of that land left, and Winona had disposed of the rest when they were kids. Wesley was their closest neighbor to the west, and owned and planted the fields surrounding the Kirk farmhouse. This year he'd put in sweet corn, which was great; it was no fun to pick-and-run when the crop was feed corn or soybeans.

"Yeah?" Jim said, pouring a little cream in his mug. "What'd Bob have to say?"

Winona sat back on the window seat overlooking the back garden, cradling her own coffee and pursing her lips thoughtfully. "Not much. One of the Wesley brood was at Scotty's last night and saw Nancy getting handsy with some stranger, and was there when the police showed up. Then there's Jemma Dubeck, whose husband was working the switchboard. Apparently she's telling anyone who'll stand still long enough that Riverside's had its first vampire attack, and it's the same vampire who's killing girls in Iowa City."

"First attack on a vampire," Jim corrected quickly, seeing Bones stiffen. For whatever reason, Leonard McCoy liked the undead even less than Jim did. "I don't think it's related."

Winona looked positively delighted. For a woman used to commanding hundreds, the tranquil fields of southwest Iowa offered few challenges and fewer diversions. She was not a member of the _Ladies Auxiliary_ , because she was not an _auxiliary_ anything—she was a proud veteran of two foreign wars, thank you very much. In place of that, she gardened militantly, watched her soaps religiously, cooked constantly—although not well, see Exhibit A: Black and Lumpy— and gossiped like a two-cent snitch in lockup.

"Someone attacked a vampire? Isn't that a little backwards?"

"Hey, Joanna," Bones said suddenly. "Why don't you go play in the living room for a bit? Maybe get your stickers out?"

"I wanna hear too," she protested, wiggling around to face him. "Was it a bad vampire? Mrs. Lee says they can be bad or good, just like reg'ler people, but we still shouldn't talk to them if they're strangers."

Her father gave her a stern look and lifted her off his lap. "A vampire is always bad, and don't you forget it, young lady. Off you go."

"But _Daddy—_ "

"Now."

" _Fine,_ " she sighed petulantly, and trudged sullenly out of the room.

Jim eyed him. "Hard words."

The doctor grimaced. "When something's that dangerous, I figure it's best not to split hairs."

Jim thought about arguing, but shrugged. It wasn't like he totally disagreed. "Maybe you're right, but last night it was the vampire that got attacked. We think Nancy Crater's a v-juice junkie and grabbed him for the fix."

Winona actually gasped, and Bones looked horrified. "V-juice? As in, vampire blood? She _drinks_ it?"

"It's green, you know?" Winona said conspiratorially. "I've heard they call it a 'Shamrock Shake' in Hollywood."

"Ugh!" Bones said with real feeling.

"You have awful taste in women," Jim told him.

"And don't I know it," Bones snapped back, looking ill. "Did it die?"

"What?" he asked, confused.

"The vampire? It died?"

Jim shook his head. "No, no. I chased Nancy to the river, and Robert was there too, the poor schmuck, and they've got the vamp pinned to the ground. I step out, I tell them they're under arrest and they bolt. I can't just leave him— it— the vampire there, so I wait for backup, get all the needles out of him, and when I look away he frickin' disappears."

"So it's still out there," Bones said, half to himself. "Jesus."

"I'd be more worried about the Craters, although they're probably halfway to Toledo by now," Jim said. "Nancy at least was loose a few very important screws, and mad enough to rip my face off and feed it to me."

" _Eeww!"_ Jo said from the living room.

Bones rounded in his chair. "Joanna Beth McCoy, what have I told you about eavesdropping?"

"I didn't drop _anything_ ," Jo insisted as she padded back into the room, coloring book and markers in hand. "The little hand is on the nine already, and you're gonna be late."

"Da— darn it," Bones said in exasperation as he caught sight of the wall clock. He rose to dump his dishes in the sink and rinse out his mug. "Thanks for the coffee and… food, Winona. I'll be by around eleven for the little terror."

" _Daaaaad,_ " Jo whined as he crouched to give her a hug and a big smacking kiss to the top of her head.

"Bye, sugar," he said with real affection. "You be good for Ms. Kirk."

He left the room, and Jim called "What about me?" after his retreating back. He got a monosyllabic grunt in return.

"Sometimes I don't feel like your daddy loves me anymore," he confided to Jo, who was hoisting herself into Bones' vacated seat and spreading her half-colored pages all over the table.

" _Goodbye, Jim_ ," came Bones' annoyed voice from the foyer. Jim grinned.

After that, the conversation moved on to more genteel topics, like the town meeting being held in a few weeks. The hot topic of the evening would be whether or not to sell some county land out by the highway to developers looking to build a Walmart; Winona was against it on principle, Jim liked the idea of the jobs it would bring with it, and Joanna was deathly bored by anything Walmart-related. She managed to steer the conversation towards her summer camp play quick enough.

"I'm gonna be a starfish! There's a song and a dance, and our costumes are a million times better than the stupid dolphins."

"Dolphins stink," he agreed, pushing his chair back. Winona glanced up from the mail and tsked.

"Oh, Jim, you didn't even touch your French toast."

He looked down at the Black and Lumpy still filling his plate, and forced a casual shrug. "Just not hungry, I guess."

He was halfway out the door when something occurred to him.

"Hey, Mom?" he asked, feeling a little colder even in the sudden heat of the summer afternoon.

"Mmm?" She looked up.

"Nyota's out?"

"Grocery shopping. Why?"

"She… she hasn't brought anyone around recently, has she? A date or something?"

"I'd be the first to cheer if she did," Winona said bluntly. "That girl needs a little more fun in her life."

He licked his lips. "So no guys? Nobody new?"

"Nope. You know something I don't?"

"Wish I didn't," he said under his breath, and stepped outside into the sunshine.

* * *

The farmhouse had a detached garage big enough to store combines in, but at present all it housed was Winona's Jeep, Jim's truck and a bunch of wrecks, some dating back to Great-Grandpa Roman's day. He parked the Jeep in the driveway and rolled out his favorite leisure project, his grandfather's original 1948 Harley Davidson panhead. There was a picture, somewhere in the albums in the attic, of Tiberius astride the bike with Mary in his lap, both of them laughing like loons and so obviously in love Jim felt a sympathetic ache in his chest whenever he looked at them. It was nice to know love like that existed, even when he'd probably never experience it himself.

While he waited for the Jeep to drain and worked on the motorcycle, he left the police scanner on and listened to the routine chatter of the sad sacks continuing the search for the Craters. He wanted to know the second they found them; the expression on Nancy's face before Robert pulled her away gave Jim honest-to-God chills.

" _Finnegan here. Stop the presses, people, something's been rooting around in McCullough's old barns, over."_

" _Giotto here. What'd'ye think it is this time, Finnegan? Coons, kids or real live fugitives, over?"_

" _Deputy Finnegan, this is Dispatch. The sheriff confirms that the barns in question were searched and cleared at 0900, over."_

The line picked up a muffled snigger from Finnegan. _"Copy that, Dispatch. Over."_

Jim was under the car wrestling a new filter in place when the scanner crackled to life again. " _All units, this is Dispatch. We've received a tip from the hotline that places persons matching the fugitives' descriptions entering a vacant mobile home in the Sunrise Mobile Home Village off South Scott Boulevard. The sheriff requests that deputies Giotto and Finnegan respond, over."_

"Ha," Jim said with satisfaction as the deputies rang in. That's what you get for goofing off on the air.

He was a bit less amused when Giotto reported in twenty minutes later, breathing hard and speaking curtly. " _Dispatch, this is Deputy Giotto requesting backup and crime scene investigators. On locating the vacant mobile home, we observed a prone male figure from the front windows. Upon entry, death was confirmed and the body tentatively identified as Dr. Robert Crater. No sign of Nancy or the Buick."_

There was a short radio silence, and then _"Copy that, deputy. The sheriff requests that all units respond to Deputy Giotto's 20, over."_

Well, there went his day off.

* * *

By the time Jim reached Sunrise Village, the place was swarming with badges. The case had obviously originated in Riverside and by extension Washington County, but Scott Boulevard was technically in Iowa City limits and thus under Johnson County jurisdiction; it looked like everyone and their brother had shown up to the intercounty pissing match. He spotted Giotto standing off to one side and made his way over, skirting CSIs and beat cops.

"Hey, Cupcake," he nodded in greeting. "What's our position here?"

"Nice of you to join us, Kirk," Giotto growled, "and fucked if I know, that's our position. I call for backup and two minutes later the ICPD shows up sirens blazing and hustles in on our crime scene like it's backstage at a Ke$ha concert."

"I'm impressed by your knowledge of pop culture," Jim told him. "Really. But what about Pike? Shouldn't he at least know where we stand?"

Giotto cocked a thumb over his shoulder. "He's tied up with some suits. They showed up five minutes after the police and grabbed him when he pulled in."

Jim turned his head and sure enough, the sheriff was standing in the street with two men in black. They looked like suits always did, cookie-cutter and shifty in dark sunglasses and two-piece-and-tie ensembles that had to be absolutely sweltering in this weather.

Jim glanced back at the mobile home, the sheer number of law enforcement officials recalling ants at a picnic. "Where's Finnegan?"

"He took Sulu and the new kid in with him. They're in holding pattern around the body until Pike says boo."

"I'm going to go talk to him, then," Jim decided. "It's better than standing around with our thumbs up our asses."

As he walked away, Giotto called after him, "You know if you'd done your job last night, we wouldn't even be here!" Jim gave him the finger.

The sheriff and suits were in such deep discussion that they didn't even notice his approach until Pike happened to glance over and meet his eyes. Chalk it up to imagination, but for a second he could have sworn that Pike glared warningly at him.

He frowned back, but the sheriff had already turned to the suits with a smile and was saying, "Gentlemen, this Deputy Kirk, one of mine."

Jim tipped his head politely and opened his mouth to ask to borrow his sheriff back, but the taller suit beat him to the punch with, "That's Deputy James Tiberius Kirk?"

"That's right," Jim admitted cautiously, looking back and forth between the two men. "You have the advantage of me, Mister…?"

With a smooth, well-practiced motion, the first man reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a badge. "My name is Agent Komack, and this is my colleague, Agent Morrow."

"A pleasure," Jim said, shaking their proffered hands.

Morrow smiled humorlessly. "Deputy Kirk, we're in town investigating the deaths of Marlena Moreau and Janice Rand."

Jim slanted a look at Pike. "And, those cases have been linked to the Craters?"

The two agents exchanged glances. "That remains to be seen," Komack allowed, "although it's certainly possible. Correct me if I'm wrong, deputy, but you knew the two murder victims personally?"

Jim nodded slowly. "Yeah, you could say that. I dated Marlena in high school, and saw Janice a few times almost two years ago now." A little of Jim's impatience leaked into his voice as he said, "I'm sorry, agents, but is this really the best place for this? We're standing in an active crime scene."

Pike's lips thinned. "Son, why don't you go get Giotto and help M'Benga? I'll be with you in a moment."

That was Christopher Pike, never one to let you step too far over the line. Jim ducked his head. "Sure thing, sheriff."

Komack looked like he may have wanted to argue, but didn't say a thing when Jim turned to catch Giotto's eye, waving the other man over as he started walking towards the coroner's van. Jim glanced back over his shoulder, and Komack was watching him leave while Pike and Morrow continued their conversation. Jim didn't like the look in his eyes; a cold, intense focus that reminded him of a wolf looking for the weakest in the herd.

"So, who're the MIB over there?" Giotto said lowly as Jim reached him.

Jim gave a careless shrug, deliberately shaking off the disquieting sensation of being watched. "Apparently the Feds are in town."

"Oh, great," Giotto muttered, and they walked into the house after the medical examiner.

When Jim came out of the house next, the suits were gone.

* * *

He drove back home in the gradually deepening twilight, moon still low in the sky and waning as he crossed the river at Vine Street. He drove east, towards home, and watched the red fade out of the sky like blood in water in his rearview mirror.

What had happened in that mobile? Nancy was crazy as a shithouse rat and perfectly capable of savagely murdering her husband, but Robert Crater had died violently enough that there was some question whether Nancy, even in the withdrawal-induced rage Jim had been witness to last night, would have been able to inflict that kind of damage. Option two, then: the vampire had somehow tracked the Craters to the mobile home, and killing Robert had distracted him long enough for Nancy to get away in the Buick.

The second option was plausible, Jim thought, following the meandering shore road. But somehow improbable. Jim had never seen a vampire killing first-hand, but if the reports were true there wouldn't have been enough of Nancy left to fill a thimble, let alone up and drive away.

Only the thinnest rim of light on the horizon remained when he turned onto to the farm's quarter-mile drive. The Jeep was still out and he parked beside it, the motion-sensing lights flicking on just in time for him to avoid hitting the oil pan. As he was climbing out of the truck the back door was flung open and Jo appeared at the screen, waving manically. He waved back, but even out on the driveway he could smell something burning and hear the thin blare of the smoke alarm. Upholding discretion as the better part of valor, he cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled, "Tell Winona I'm gonna get the paper, okay, Jojo?"

When he heard her "Okay!", he slammed the truck's door shut and started back down the gravel drive on foot.

There was enough light to see, barely, but halfway to the main road he found himself wishing he'd thought to grab a flashlight. He'd never been afraid of the dark, not as a child and certainly not as a grown man and a sheriff's deputy, but the darkness reminded him of that night on the roadside, eyes like starless infinity and the cool metal of a muzzle pressed to his forehead. He'd woken up in a cold sweat more times than he cared to remember in the last week with that voice in his head like honey and chilled wine, cold and sweet and stupefying. He would have done anything that vampire damn well asked, and he knew it, but he'd still stopped the Craters from draining it. Here, in the dark with his memories, that sounded like the worst mistake he'd ever made, and Jim had plenty to compare it to.

It was breezier now than it had been the last few nights, a bit more wind breathing through the line of trees that separated the drive from the fields, bringing the smell of dry grass and warm earth. The evening edition that was usually just haphazardly tossed in the general direction of the house had been carefully slotted into the mailboxes across the road; maybe Winona had made good on her threat to wait in the bushes for the kid that delivered it and give him a piece of her mind. Then again, Jim didn't see any obvious bloodstains as he jogged across the asphalt, so maybe not.

On this side of 130th, the ground sloped abruptly away into the river valley behind a small perfunctory guardrail, the river snaking fifty feet below. From the house's wraparound porch you could see both the English and the Iowa rivers, but from the road it was just the latter. In the daytime a man could see for miles from the top off the bluff, the patchwork hills rolling off into the distance like God's own quilt, and at night the lights of River Junction and Lone Tree twinkled like fallen constellations.

Jim took a step closer to the edge to admire the view, and somewhere behind him a car revved to life. He turned towards the sound, curious, and brought up a hand to shield his eyes from the sudden glare of the headlights.

He didn't realize until a moment too late that the squealing tires and roaring engine were coming directly for him.

A second later, the car's front bumper smashed into the guardrail, catching his hip as he lunged to the left. The impact was glancing, but his whole side went numb as he hit the ground and rolled. Behind him, the car pealed out in reverse, and he staggered to his feet and started running for the treeline, splinters of white-hot pain shooting down his leg. It wouldn't be enough, he realized with growing panic, even as he put all the strength he had into every lurching step; he was the middle of the road and the driver in the, _Goddamnit,_ in the _black Buick Regal_ had already switched gears andwas flooring it—

This time the collision was strong enough that Jim rolled up into the windshield, feeling the glass crack and spiderweb with the force of impact. The car screeched to a halt and he tumbled bonelessly off the hood, hitting the pavement like a puppet with its strings cut.

He lay there on his side, too stunned for a moment to do much more than let the breath hitch in and out of his lungs, sharp stabbing twinges all through his chest and bone creaking and rubbing where ribs had broken. Something was wrong with his pelvis, a brilliant starburst of pain streaking through his body when he tried to move his legs, his stomach strangely full and heavy. The phrase _internal bleeding_ flittered through his mind, too quick to latch on to as something thick and vicous started seeping into his eyes.

He waited for the wheels to spin forward again, crush his skull and end it, but somewhere above the screaming pain he heard the car door open, and footsteps coming towards him. The world exploded into kaleidoscopic, red-edged agony, a Technicolor hell of pain, forcing his breath out in a winded grunt and his stinging eyes open wide, just in time to see Nancy Crater raise the tire iron again, her face a mask of bloodlust.

Things went a bit… fuzzy. Later, when Jim couldn't shunt the memory away, he'd tell himself his eyes must have closed. It was certainly more plausible and far less unsettling than _the night opened up and swallowed the woman whole._ He was vaguely cognizant of movement, of sound, loud, horrendous noises and bright brittle screams from somewhere in his periphery, but none of it seemed very important. He blinked, and watched his blood seep into the rough-paved asphalt, and choked out a wet laugh. He couldn't feel his legs anymore.

In a bit it all seemed to die down, and Jim became aware of someone crouching over him.

"James, can you hear me?"

It was the voice. The one from his dreams. Jim wondered if he was dreaming.

"James?"

If so, he wished it weren't so cold. The pain was almost completely gone now, which was nice, but the cold was getting unbearable.

"You are very badly injured."

Well, no shit Sherlock. Most people didn't walk away from a fight with two thousand pounds of steel unscathed. Jim tried to laugh again, and it bubbled horribly in his throat.

Instantly, a cool palm was cupping his cheek. "You must stop that. You only hasten your death."

Jim subsided and lay still, oddly soothed by the touch.

"You must answer me clearly now, James. It is in my power to heal you. I offer my blood freely to you once more, without conditions. Will you—?"

Jim was already shaking his head minutely, gurgling, "Nrnnnm, dun wunnit…"

"Hush." A second hand joined the first, fingers splayed at precise angles over his forehead and cheekbones. "You refuse?"

_Don't want to be a junkie_ , he tried to say. His lips shaped the words, but all that came out was another pathetic gurgle. _Don't want to be like her._

"What if I could assure you you would never been like that creature?"

_Wouldn't believe you_ , he thought hazily. The darkness was growing somehow more profound, the edges of his vision blanking out and going black.

That voice, which had been so emotionless and cold, seemed closer and warmer now, leaking anger and a bit of desperation. "You have rescued me from true death, James, and I have done little but bespell and frighten you. I will be forever guilty in the eyes of Surak."

_I don't want to die_ , came a sudden tiny whisper from somewhere deep inside him. _I don't want to die._

Long fingers stroked his cheek. "Then you will not."

The hand drew back from his face, and when it returned it was to press fingers wet with something salty against his lips. "Drink," the voice insisted.

It was—and more was pooling in the palm, running down in rivulets from the gash in the wrist that Jim traced with his tongue, ignoring the pain and his own small, hurt noises to reach for the arm attached to that wrist and bring it closer, so he could fit his mouth around the wound and _drink_.

His limbs grew lighter, his mind clearer as though he were transforming from bone and flesh to light and air, curling himself around his prize and suckling until it closed. He felt the fleeting urge to rip into the yielding flesh with his teeth, to take _more_ , and horror washed over him. It too faded into the strange lethargic bliss that had overtaken his body. Someone was gently brushing his hair back from his face, and he smiled drowsily without opening his eyes.

"Thank you," the voice whispered. "My debt is paid."

"Anytime," he murmured, only half aware of what he was saying.

"I hope for both our sakes it is not a common occurrence," the voice responded quietly. "Though since I have come to live among humankind, I have found myself pushed to violence far more often that I had supposed I might be."

"Nyota will do that to a man," he said dryly.

There was an astonished silence, and then a brief, rusty-sounding chuckle. Startled, Jim looked up to meet the vampire's gaze— and his eyes were the rich velvet brown of the finest Swiss chocolate, like cinnamon and chestnuts all the best things Jim had ever tasted.

"Now sleep, James."

He slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author Note** : It occurs to me that people unfamiliar with Star Trek: the Original Series might be asking themselves, "Where the hell are these weird OCs coming from?" Professor Robert and Nancy Crater are the very first villains in the very first episode, [The Man Trap](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Man_Trap_\(episode\)). Finnegan is this random douche upperclassman that torments Kirk at Star Fleet Academy and again on [Shore Leave](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Shore_Leave_\(episode\)). Admiral James Komack of Star Fleet almost got Spock killed in [Amok Time](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Amok_Time_\(episode\)) (the pon farr episode!). Admiral Henry Morrow of Star Fleet is just generally an uptight dick in several Star Trek movies, including [The Search for Spock](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_III:_The_Search_for_Spock) and [The Voyage Home](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_IV:_The_Voyage_Home). I'll put in more author notes as other minor characters get introduced.  
> 


	4. Extenuating Circumstances

"Jim?" someone asked. It was a familiar voice, rough with fatigue and surprise. "What the hell are you doing out here?"

His eyes fluttered open, and the first thing he saw was Bones crouched over him with an annoyed frown, still in scrubs and smelling faintly of disinfectant. He said, "Did you—? Did you fall asleep on the _porch_?"

Hmm. Well, actually, the last thing he remembered doing was dying on the side of the road, but here was Bones and there went the jingle of the windchime that had hung from the eves since his childhood, and if he turned his head he could see through the railings and into the front yard.

Yep. Definitely the porch.

"… dunno," Jim admitted. He felt clear-headed but kitten-weak, like the first few lucid days after a fever. "Maybe?"

"Jim…" The annoyance on his friend's face was dissolving into worry as he watched Jim prop himself into a sitting position on shaky arms, took in his thready tone and torn clothes. He cupped a hand under Jim's chin and tilted his head up to the light shining through the glass panes of the door. "Are you—?" He sucked in a startled breath. "Ah, Christ, you're bleeding."

"Huh?" Jim tried to look down at himself despite Bones' grip. "Where?"

Bones' hand slid to his chest and pushed him down again, gently but firmly. "It's your head. I want you to lie back, nice and slow, and I'm gonna go put on the porch light, alright?"

"Mmkay." Jim settled back obediently, and almost immediately became engrossed in the flaking paint of the porch roof. His vision seemed to hyperfocus on each small imperfection in the old, cream-colored wash, tiny details so clear and crisp that it gave him a dizzying sensation of vertigo. He let his head fall to the side and that was worse— every chip and crack in the balustrade, every blade of grass in the yard stood out in sharp contrast to the next, as if each individual piece of the universe was spotlit independently of the others. It made his head ache with the intensity of it, especially when the wind picked up and the grass became a frothing sea of movement.

While Jim stared out into the dark yard and realized he could count all the petals on his mother's pansies in the front beds, Bones had risen and walked out of his line of sight. The quiet snick of the door latching told Jim he'd gone inside the house. He heard the pipes running somewhere inside, and a few clinks and thumps from inside the house as Bones messed around… probably getting hot water or something equally 'Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman'.

Sure enough, when the man stepped back outside Jim saw the towel and bowl in his hands. When Bones reached back into the mudroom to flick on the porch light— which was fucking _blinding_ , ow ow ow— a bit of water lapped over the edge and Jim could see each tiny drop blaze like a miniature sun as it fell.

He must have said that 'ow ow ow' part out loud, because the light blinked off quickly. "Jim?"

"Sorry, sorry," he groaned, waving a hand with the other clamped protectively over his eyes. "It was just a little bright, after. You know."

Bones made a sympathetic noise, but said, "I need the light, Jimmy, it's blacker than a coal mine at midnight out here. Keep your hand up and your eyes closed."

He did, but still winced when even under his hand the insides of his lids lit up bright red and burning.

Somewhere above him, Bones sucked in a startled breath and swore loudly. "Holy Mother of God, kid, what the hell have you been doing to yourself?"

A very good question, that. Nothing seemed to be _wrong,_ per se; his eyes were a bit—tweaked, and his muscles felt tight, and a little sore. Like he'd forgotten to stretch before a hard run, or something. Despite that, and very recent and visceral memories of broken bones and torn flesh, he wasn't in any pain. He frowned and squirmed a bit on the hard plank floor, testingly. "'M okay, I think. Nothing hurts."

A hand pressed him down, holding him in place. "Just shut the hell up and stay still," Bones said, not unkindly. "I'll be the judge of whether or not you're okay, and with the amount of blood on your face I'm leaning toward _no_."

"I'm _fine_ ," he insisted, which was probably a lie, but he honestly had no idea. There was a strange cloying aftertaste in his mouth that clung to his throat when he swallowed against it, but he wasn't going to think about that. Ever, if possible.

Bones grunted noncommittally. "Then a quick check won't hurt."

Much to the other man's loudly-voiced surprise, the blood caking Jim's forehead was not hiding a gaping head wound, and the bloody tears in his shirt and jeans revealed only unmarked skin. Bones checked and rechecked, carefully prodding at Jim's ribs and hairline, feeling along the long bone of his femur and rotating his knees experimentally.

"Didya beat the shit out of someone?" he asked bemusedly as he helped Jim to his feet. "Are there bodies we should be burying?"

Somewhere along the line Jim's eyes had stopped stinging, but the world still looked a little off. Skewed. The shadows didn't lay quite right and in some of them Jim swore he saw movement, little flickers of light and breath like the trees and patio furniture had heartbeats. The junebugs left ultraviolet trails behind them as they wove lovestruck around the porchlight. Bones put a steadying hand on his shoulder and Jim saw every flexing tendon and pulsing vein like they were made of neon, limned in gold. He was afraid to look at his friend's face.

"Uh," he said belatedly, realizing that Bones was staring at him, waiting for an answer. But what could he say? _Yeah, about all this. Nancy Crater ran me over and— no, no, I'm okay, Spock dosed me up with v-juice. Get this, it gave me x-ray vision!_

"I don't really remember?" he tried.

Bones didn't believe him, he saw that. The man went off again, lecturing on the dangers of recreational violence as he tugged an unresisting Jim through the mudroom and into the kitchen. There, under the strong overhead lights, the strange visions— hallucinations?— seemed to die back to an uneasy stirring at the edges of his eyesight. Jim sat through another thorough examination and tried to convince himself that the photos on the wall weren't glowing; the headshot of his dad in uniform was especially bright.

"There's nothing here," Bones finally admitted, setting his bowl of soiled water aside and taking the chair next to Jim. "Absolutely nothing."

The man sounded almost put out. "And that's a good thing, right?"

The comment earned him another healthy glare. "When you wake up covered in blood and can't remember how it got there, it's not a good thing, Jim. Even if there's no physical trauma—"

"Bones!" There were some serious drawbacks to having friends who actually gave a shit, who felt obligated to _help_ all the time. "I don't feel like I'm dying or anything. Honest. And I'm pretty sure I haven't killed anybody."

Bones made a disgusted sound and slumped back in his seat, looking horrifically tired now that the Vegas lightshow under his skin had dimmed. The plain blue scrubs he wore were clean but sharply creased, probably the ones he kept in his trunk for the bad days when he didn't want to come home to Joanna smelling like other people's pain.

"Bad day?" Jim asked softly, leaning back in his own chair.

Bones gave a broken chuckle. "Yeah. Got worse when I saw you laid out like roadkill on the damn porch."

A little too apt for comfort, that. "I can get you a beer," he offered.

"Naw." Bones rolled his head forward, stretching out cramped muscles. "Think I'll grab Jo and head out. Feel like sleeping in my own bed tonight."

"I'll get her," he said, rising, but Bones grabbed his arm and tugged him back.

"Better not let her see you like that," he said gruffly. "I'll get her, and you get her things from the living room."

Jojo was not a light traveler. Just as Jim had finished collecting all the modeling clay, pipe cleaners and Crayola markers scattered throughout the lower level of house, Bones was coming back down the stairs with his daughter curled into his shoulder, sound asleep and adorable in froggy footie pajamas. He met Jim's smile with a small one of his own, and as they passed through the darkened foyer and out the front door the shadows around his head brightened into a halo.

Jim settled the art supplies into the trunk as Bones laid Jo's limp body across the back seat and shut the car door as softly as possible. The man gave him a little wave as he circled around to climb into the driver's seat, and Jim whispered, "G'night, Bones."

He'd turned to walk back to the house when Bones' voice stopped him. "Hey, Jim?"

He looked back. "Yeah?"

From across the roof of the car, Bones' eyes searched his face, puzzlement and worry in equal measures. He didn't say anything for a moment, didn't seem to know what to say.

"You know you can count on me," he said quietly, finally. "Whatever's going on."

"… Yeah. I know."

Bones' expression, wreathed in that strange corona of bright shadows, said, _Do you?_

* * *

The x-ray vision, if that's what it was, faded as the sun rose, and Jim felt almost normal as he drove to work— a bit lethargic and disconnected, like he'd taken too much cough medicine, but well within the bounds of human average. He rolled the windows down to try and blow some of the cobwebs out, and almost instantly regretted it; even at eight in the morning the atmosphere was already sticky-hot and disgusting. Where was their goddamn rain?

He was sitting at his desk in the county's Washington headquarters when the call came in, staring blearily down at his cold coffee and donut and pretending there weren't ten forms for every bullet he'd fired at the Craters stacked next to them. Sulu's desk abutted Jim's in their tiny closet of an office, and Chekov's temporary berth was a sliver of Jim's workspace that normally went unused, so when the phone rang all three of them reached for their receivers.

"Hello?"

"Yeah?"

" _Da_?"

Sulu was the lucky winner, and he grinned at Jim and Chekov's irritated faces as he said, "Yes, Sulu here." He braced the phone against his ear with a shoulder and started rifling through the empty soda cans and case dockets littering his messy desktop. "Yes, sir. Just a minute." He looked up, and mouthed, _Paper?_

Jim chucked a notepad at his head and Sulu caught it, as smooth as if they'd practiced. "Alright, go ahead," he said, and stuck his tongue out. Jim gave him the finger.

As Sulu listened, though, his expression grew more grave, and when his eyes flicked up to meet Jim's they looked troubled. He bent to scribble something out on the paper, nodding to himself. "Yep. Yes sir, will do. Twenty minutes tops, sir."

He hung up and looked back to Jim. "You live on the east end of 130th, right?'

Jim straightened in his chair. "Close enough. Why, what's up?"

"They found Nancy Crater." Sulu was already standing and pulling open a drawer to grab his sidearm. "She drove in her car through the guardrails just off 130th and Willow. Sheriff says to come quick, and bring the new guy."

Jim's mouth went dry, but he managed a gruff "Gotcha," and a terse "Grab your gear" to Chekov. They had to wait for the boy to dig out his own piece, and then for him to find his holster. When they entered the carpark, Chekov trailing a little ways behind them as he struggled to fasten his gun and radio in place, he asked eagerly, "Can I drive?"

" _No,"_ Jim and Sulu answered in perfect unison.

* * *

It was surreal, looking down into the same ravine he'd climbed all over as a child and seeing the mangled wreck of the Craters' Buick at the very bottom, twenty feet shy of the water's edge. It was wrapped around the huge gnarled oak Sam had fallen from in the summer after third grade, breaking an arm and a collarbone. Nancy had fared significantly worse, if the covered stretcher making its way up the steep slope was anything to go by. As they passed M'Benga and his med tech minions, Jim saw that the shape under the bag seemed to be missing a few essential limbs, and shivered.

"What I don't understand," Pike was saying as they drew within earshot, "is how she managed to miss all these trees up here and smack into this one. There's no trail through the underbrush, no tire marks in the sand, nothing."

"Maybe she floored it off the edge," Giotto suggested. "Coulda flown right over them."

"Could have," the sheriff allowed, tone heavy with doubt. He glanced up, spotted the newly arrived group and waved them over to where he and Giotto stood next to the wreckage. "Afternoon, deputies."

"Good afternoon, sheriff!" Chekov responded joyfully, and Pike's eyebrows hiked up. He looked over at Jim, who only rolled his eyes.

A sly grin quirked Pike's mouth for the briefest part of a second before he responded. "Glad to have you with us, Deputy Chekov. I've got a special assignment for you and Deputy Sulu, if you're feeling up to it."

"Oh, yes, sir!" The Russian was practically vibrating with enthusiasm.

The sheriff clapped him companionably on the shoulder. "Excellent. Y'see, deputy, we've recovered most of the late Mrs. Crater from the car, but we're out a few pieces. Would you boys mind looking around for—" Here he made a show of consulting his clipboard and flipping a few pages up and down. "Ah, yes. Her head."

Sulu's lip curled, and even Chekov seemed to wilt a bit at that. "Her… her head?" he said uncertainly.

Pike nodded solemnly, the hint of a twinkle in his eye. "Seems that the force of impact may have severed it and ejected it from the vehicle. We're pretty sure we've got the right gal, but without a head it's been hard to make a positive identification of the remains."

"Oh," Chekov said, gazing around them at the thick summer brush and muddy river channels. "Then, I will do my best, sir!" he stated, straightening to his full 5'7" and looking fierce.

Sulu looked down at his polished regulation boots, already scuffed and dirty from their descent into the ravine, and scowled in disgust. "I knew I should have brought galoshes."

The two of them snapped on gloves and moved out to join the rest of the search party, disappearing from sight almost immediately in the bushy undergrowth. Jim stayed where he was, obeying Pike's unspoken order to remain behind.

The man pulled off his Smokey Bear and ran a hand over his hair, looking around at the busy teams working to clear the area and secure the totaled Buick for towing. "M'Benga estimates time of death at before midnight last night, so I figure it's worth asking if anyone up at the house heard anything."

Jim shook his head. "If they did, they didn't say anything at breakfast."

"Hmm," Pike said noncommittally. "And you include yourself in that?"

"Yep. No bumps in the night that I noticed."

The sheriff nodded. "And you haven't seen that vampire of yours around?" he asked, casual as an a-bomb.

Jim ducked his head a bit, playing up the little 'aw, shucks' smile on his face. "Can't say that I remember being in possession of a vampire, sir."

Pike raised an eyebrow. "I'd like to have a grown-up talk, Jim. I know you're capable."

The smile evaporated. "Yes, sir," Jim said.

Pike heaved a sigh, and settled the hat back on his head. "You're young, Jim. Fifty years ago a vampire sighting two counties over would have sent the whole town into a blind panic. Thirty years ago we were all but at war with them. Now... well." He laughed, short and hollow. "Now they're making guest appearances on Oprah and running for _Congress_. Shit."

"Times are changing, sheriff."

"That they are, son. But that doesn't change the facts, and the facts here are that Nancy Crater made a vampire very, very angry and now she is very, very dead. Think about it," Pike said, fixing Jim with a look that willed him to understand. "Even for a drop this size, there's just too much damage to the car, to the body, for this to have been an accident."

Jim gazed steadily back. "What are you saying, sir?"

Pike looked back at the car, rapping his knuckles on the twisted metal of the hood. "I'm saying that you need to be careful, deputy."

And that Jim couldn't argue with. If the vampire had staged this gory scene, then Spock had disregarded human law and that was the beginning of the end. Rogue vampires were a danger on par with Ebola and hurricanes.

From somewhere in the distance, Chekov shouted excitedly, _"I have found the head! Is caught in tree branches! You have ladder?"_

* * *

The first thing that Jim saw on entering the house that night was Grandma Mary's fine china tea things, spread out over his low crude coffee table like so much lace.

The second thing he saw was Spock, sitting stiffly upright on the edge of the curvy settee someone snuck in when Jim wasn't looking. It didn't go with his battered leather couches and clunky end tables any more than the vampire did.

Jim froze just inside the door and at the sound of the screen door slamming shut behind him, Gaila looked up from fiddling with her teabag and grinned. She obviously found whatever stunned expression he was wearing deeply amusing. "Jim, hi! Nyota and I were just settling down to a little girl's night in when who should pop by but Mr. Spock! He was looking for you, and we invited him in to wait. Hope you don't mind."

"Don't mi—?" The threshold was man's last defense against vampires, a barrier that couldn't be breached unless someone was stupid enough to invite the bloodsuckers inside. Gaila knew that. Of course she did, why else would she taunt him like this? "Gaila!"

"Calm down, Jim," Nyota said as she entered the room. She was carrying the kettle wrapped in towels, and set it down very carefully in the middle of the table before turning to face him. "I asked him in."

Spock spoke for the first time, the low cadences of his voice perfectly normal and human-sounding. "Forgive me. It was not my intention to intrude."

"Don't be silly," Nyota said brusquely. But Spock was watching Jim's face, and whatever he saw there apparently didn't sit well. He got slowly to his feet, and he was almost unrecognizable from the night before: pale, but not marble white; tall, but Jim realized with a shock that they were almost the same height. His eyes were dark, but not the deep wells of night they'd been when he'd asked, _Does that sound fair, deputy?_

"James and I have private business to discus," Spock announced gravely. "Perhaps it would be best if we retired to the porch."

Jim bared his teeth in a grim smile. "Great idea. Even better, let's go for a walk." Away from the house, as far away as he could get him from Nyota and Gaila. Jim was still in uniform, he had his gun; he was far safer than they were.

Nyota gave him a narrow-eyed look, but Jim turned the smile on her and none-to-subtly inserted himself between them when Spock had taken a few steps away. The vampire allowed himself to be herded into the foyer and out the door without comment.

Thunder grumbled in the distance, and the thick cloud cover that had rolled in towards evening meant that the yard was pitch-dark, but he led Spock down the steps and out onto the gravel without incident. Some of that otherworldly glow from the night before prickled at the corners of his eyes, and under his feet the rocks rippled like shallow water.

Surprisingly, it was Spock who spoke first, his voice uncharacteristically tinged with chagrin. "It seems that I have once more managed to offend. I am sorry, James."

"It's Jim," Jim said, "and I'm pretty sure this time wasn't wholly your fault. Ny invited you in, after all."

"And you do not wish for me to be in your house." There was no anger in Spock's voice, only the blandness of stated fact.

Jim glanced over at his companion, still distinctly visible against the sooty backdrop of the woods edging the property. "It's hard for me to forget that the first time I met you, you threatened to kill me."

"But I have also saved your life," Spock reminded him.

"Did you kill Nancy Crater?" Jim returned.

It might have seemed a non sequitor to most, but to Spock's credit he didn't try to dissemble or deny anything. "If you refer to the creature who attempted to drain me and murder you, then yes, I killed her. It was the most logical course of action."

"The most logical," Jim echoed faintly, bemused.

Spock gave a short nod, as if pleased Jim was following his argument. "Yes. While life is sacred and nonviolence the preferred option in any civilized society, the Crater woman was clearly a danger to others and when she threatened your life, I ended hers."

"No, not just that. You tore her to pieces and threw her car off a fifty-foot drop," Jim felt compelled to point out. "You tried to make it look like an accident."

If he hadn't been staring at Spock's face, he would have missed the long blink that seemed to pass as Spock's equivalent to a shrug. "… I did not wish to further complicate my life here, or yours," he said finally. "It was the most expedient option at that moment."

' _Most expedient'?_ a voice in Jim's head whispered. _This is crazy_. _He murdered a woman and tried to make it look like an_ _accident. Put a bullet in his brain and call the BVA in Des Moines to come pick up the ashes in the_ _morning._

What came out instead was, "A word to the wise: total dismemberments don't usually occur in collisions."

"I will attempt to keep it in mind," Spock said, so dryly Jim had no idea if he was joking or not.

They walked in silence until they reached the end of the gravel drive, and Jim realized he'd been unconsciously retracing his steps from the night before: down the drive to the road, the mailbox, the ravine. The crime scene.

He glanced up at Spock, thinking. "Nyota said you're staying at your family's old place?"

It was close by, he knew. Even taking his timely appearance last night out of the equation, Jim had left the crash site today just as the sun set— and in the scant five minutes that it had taken him to walk down this same drive and up to the house, Spock had managed to not only arrive before him, but also had been there long enough to be invited in and sat down for tea.

Spock didn't appear perturbed by the chance of subject. "On the grounds, yes. My mother was a Grayson, and after the vampire citizenship law passed I was able to claim the deed to the property as an inheritor."

Jim carefully schooled his features to show only mild interest. Close, he'd thought, but not this close. The old Grayson farmstead abutted theirs to the south, just across a small family graveyard that hadn't been used since the 1920s. As far as Jim knew, the place had been deserted for decades. The house and outbuildings were probably completely unlivable.

Spock's smooth, cool voice was saying something to that affect, something about Nyota helping him find contractors and how bad the wiring was, and it suddenly struck Jim how human Spock looked and sounded right now. What strange illusion was that, when even the blades of grass they walked through glimmered like slender swords of light to Jim's eyes?

"James?"

He looked up into Spock's angular face and realized he'd been quiet for a bit too long. Under that patient stare, he blurted out, "You're different."

If pauses could be characterized, this one would have been nonplussed. "I beg your pardon?" the vampire asked delicately.

"Your voice, for instance. It used to…" Jim felt a single fat drop of rain fall on his face, roll down his cheek like a tear. "It was more, I don't know, _hypnotic_. I could almost feel it."

"Ah."

For a blessed moment, Jim though that Spock might let the comment go as one more strange, incomprehensible thing that that mouthy human said. But then, as a second drop fell on Jim's exposed collar, the vampire asked, "Do you feel this?"

" _Guh,"_ Jim choked out, as his muscles seized in protest against an imaginary pressure threatening to bring him crashing his knees. Spock was watching him, a cat looking at a mouse that didn't know it was already as good as eaten.

"James," the vampire murmured, and the pressure flexed around him like the wide, heavy coils of a snake. The rain began to fall around them in earnest now, wetting his hair and darkening his shirtfront. "You have had my blood," Spock continued, the words painted in low, sweet tones that did wonderful things to Jim's almost entirely unwilling system. "You have some measure of protection from a vampire's glamour, and so I must make a greater effort to ensnare you." He looked off down the drive, towards the house. "I cannot glamour Nyota at all," he said. "I suspect it is a consequence of her gift. It is how we first met."

" _If you hurt her I'll kill you_ ," Jim squeezed out. It took everything he had.

The vampire looked at him then. The sensation of pressure disappeared, and Spock went very still under the downpour falling from the heavens.

"I think you have perhaps misunderstood something," he said quietly, voice almost lost in the sounds of the wind and rain.

Overhead, lightning cracked like a whip across the sky, followed by deafening thunder. Jim didn't hear it. Spock was reaching forward, spanning the small distance between them and cupping his jaw, stroking a cold thumb over the curve of his lower lip. Jim didn't move.

He didn't move when Spock stepped forward. Didn't move when the vampire leaned into him, slowly, giving him every opportunity to protest or pull away.

Somehow it was still a shock when their lips met, a breathless spark of contact that made Jim gasp and Spock shy away. _"Jim_ ," he breathed, and the sound curled around them like smoke. "I do not… will you come to me? To my home, tomorrow night?"

Jesus, what could he say to that?

As it turned out, the answer was, _"Yes."_

Spock smiled very slightly, more with his eyes than anything, and faded into the rain.

* * *

Back inside the house, Gaila looked up from the couch and said, "What happened? You were gone for more than an hour!"

"An hour?" he mumbled dazedly, still caught up in the feeling of Spock's goodnight kiss, like a live ember brushed against his lips. "Wasn't that long. He— he wanted to talk about the Grayson place. He's living there, you know? He headed back when the rain started."

"It was _so_ that long. But, hey, it'll be nice to have neighbors that close, right?" Gaila said, and giggled. On the couch facing the television, Nyota was passed out on her back, mouth open and snoring slightly.

He shook himself slightly, pushing away the memories of the last few minutes. Hour? He'd worry about the lost time later. He put a dubious look on his face and eyed the tea service with exaggerated suspicion. "I thought you two were drinking tea."

Gaila wobbled to her feet, almost tipping over when she tossed her hair back. "We switched to whiskey sometime after the burning of Atlanta."

She managed two more steps before tripping again, and this time Jim caught and steadied her while she laughed. "Oh, thank you, Rhett," she simpered, and pressed a soft peck to the underside of his jaw.

Jim froze for a second, and thought, ridiculously, _Can't._

But this was what he wanted, this was _normal_. This was safe and warm and good, the familiar feel of curves under his hands and Gaila's limpet-like grip as she wound her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth to his for a real kiss. This was life-affirming and comforting, the heat of her body sinking into his chilled skin until the jolt of a kiss like lightning melted away into memory.

"You staying the night, then?" he asked, a little breathless when they separated.

"Only if I can share your bed," she whispered back, licking at his bottom lip. "I just can't _stand_ sleeping on couches."

He gave her a little grin. "I think there might be room for two."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> **Author Note** : It occurs to me that people unfamiliar with Star Trek: the Original Series might be asking themselves, "Where the hell are these weird OCs coming from?" Professor Robert and Nancy Crater are the very first villains in the very first episode, [The Man Trap](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Man_Trap_\(episode\)). Finnegan is this random douche upperclassman that torments Kirk at Star Fleet Academy and again on [Shore Leave](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Shore_Leave_\(episode\)). Admiral James Komack of Star Fleet almost got Spock killed in [Amok Time](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Amok_Time_\(episode\)) (the pon farr episode!). Admiral Henry Morrow of Star Fleet is just generally an uptight dick in several Star Trek movies, including [The Search for Spock](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_III:_The_Search_for_Spock) and [The Voyage Home](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Trek_IV:_The_Voyage_Home). I'll put in more author notes as other minor characters get introduced.


	5. Puzzle Pieces

Jim had third shift the next day and dozed well into the afternoon, even after the warm body next to him whispered, "Taking off with Ny, sweetheart. Gotta feed the cat," and slipped out of his arms.

As he lay drowsing in the long stretch of summer sun across his bed, he felt the bed sink and a finger on his bottom lip, tracing its shape as it slowly curved under the soft touch. "Mmmm," he breathed out.

_Will you come to me?_

With a strangled gasp Jim jerked fully awake, hand clapped over his mouth and staring wildly around the sunny room. The sunny, empty room.

"Gaila?" he called into the silence.

No one answered him.

"Christ," he breathed, and let his hand fall back.

He couldn't explain even to himself why he'd said _yes_. Here, in broad daylight, it seemed like the worst kind of stupidity—the kind of brazen, reckless thrill-seeking he'd set aside after Pike bullied him into the academy and brought him home to Riverside. Jim knew himself well enough, had lived through enough catastrophes of his own making to recognize the sick curl of dread and excitement in his gut as more addictive than cocaine. It hummed through his body when he licked his lips and felt an echo of that spark, and could almost taste the copper-sweet salt of blood—

Jim groaned and turned over, curling around a pillow. Fucked up, that was so fucked up, he was _not_ imagining burying his face in that long white neck and doing a little biting of his own.

He was. Goddamnit.

At the time, 'yes' had seemed to be the only answer he could give, the only one he'd wanted to give. But, really, how could he trust his reactions around a man— being— who was capable of making Jim do or say anything he wanted?

Jim tucked his chin over the edge of the pillow. Still. There was something about Spock— the way he spoke, his awkward apologies, the oddly hesitant look in his eyes when he'd leaned in to kiss Jim. It was… he supposed he might call it _endearing_ , in the loosest sense of the word. It got harder to remember that Spock was, by species definition, a murderer the longer Jim dwelled on the breathless rush of his words the night before.

_Will you come to me?_

He shivered, and clutched the pillow tighter.

* * *

When Jim finally wandered downstairs in an old pair of sweatpants and nothing else, there was a message on the pad next to the phone. _Went to work,_ Nyota's fluid handwriting spelled out. _Call me._

" _Scotty's Pub and Brewery, a wee slice o' Scotland in th' fair state o' Iowa_ ," came the Scotsman's thickest Highland burr.

"I thought you were a Bar and Grill?"

" _Aye, that too,"_ Scotty said agreeably. " _What can ah do for ye, Jim?"_

"Is Ny around?" He ambled towards the fridge as he spoke, wondering if there was any sausage left.

"' _Tis nae a switchboard I'm running, Jim_ ," the man said disapprovingly.

Jim yawned, scratching idly at his stomach. "Mm, yeah. Sorry, she asked me to call."

Somewhere on Scotty's end of the line, Nyota said, " _Is that Jim? Come on, I promise I'll be just a minute, 'kay?"_

" _Fine, fine,"_ the Scotsman muttered, but for her his tone softened, less grumpy and more… affectionate. Jim raised an eyebrow.

" _Jim?"_

"Your boss likes you," he said accusingly as he opened the fridge and grabbed the orange juice.

" _I like to think so_ ," she answered dryly. _"After all, he signs my paychecks._ "

He took a long drink straight out of the carton, then set it aside to grab eggs and some cheddar from the cheese drawer. "Yeah, sure. Mmm-mm, breakfast time."

" _Did you just get up?"_ She sounded scandalized.

The fry pan was still on the stove, excellent. "Maybe," he allowed as he started cracking shells.

" _That's disgusting, it's three in the afternoon!"_

He grinned. "You're just jealous 'cause you're working a double. Whadya want, Nyny?"

" _Do me a favor, and on your way into town drive Gaila to the bar? She's working the last half of my late shift and I don't want her walking there in the dark."_

He propped the phone against his ear with his shoulder and worked the sausage packet open. "Yeah? You doing something tonight?"

" _Relaxing at home. It's her punishment for the hangover I woke up with this morning."_

He laughed. "Sure thing. Time?"

" _Ten._ "

The third shift started at eleven. "No problemo."

" _Great! I'll call and tell her."_

He yawned again, and started dropping sausage in the pan. "I'll be there around nine-thirty, then."

" _Thanks, Jim. It's only a couple of blocks, I know, but… I'd just feel better."_

She didn't have to mention Marlena or Janice, but they were there in the unspoken pauses. "I got you, Ny," he said, humor draining out of his voice. "No worries."

They rang off and Jim made his breakfast, cheese omelet and links with maple syrup. He finished the carton of orange juice and plated up extra food for Winona. He could see her ridiculously oversized gardening hat bobbing around the azaleas through the kitchen window.

He'd been thinking of starting some sanding work on the Harley, but the minute he stepped outside Winona had him hauling and spreading fertilizer. They worked like that, side by side and muddy up to their elbows in the loamy vegetable plots, until the light dimmed and the sun slowly sank below the treeline.

He'd been seeing a lot of sunsets recently, he mused as he drove along 130th towards town, windows down and the radio blaring. This one wasn't particularly showy, just a long clear gradient from blush mauve in the west to inky indigo in the east. Even that faint color was gone completely by the time he pulled up to the curb at Gaila's duplex and honked, tapping the wheel in time with Guns n' Roses.

Axel's last scream segued into the opening chords of "Smoke on the Water", one of the few things Jim had ever learned to play on the battered old guitar he'd lugged around San Fran. God, that must have been, what, six or seven years ago, now? He let his fingers form the familiar patterns and sang along, a little tunelessly, but no one had ever accused Jim Kirk of having true talent. He honked again, impatiently, and after "Layla" and "Hotel California" he pulled out his phone.

"C'mon," he muttered as it rang. "Pick up the— ahhh, damn it." The voicemail message chirped how happy it was that he'd called, and Jim shoved the cell into his back pocket and turned off the truck.

Just as he was trotting up the front steps, the door of the second apartment opened and Mrs. Colt stuck her head out, her graying hair in curlers. "Jim Kirk, I know that wasn't you blaring your horn at ten on a Tuesday night," she said with stiff disapproval.

"Sorry, ma'am," he said, chagrined. The woman had been his algebra teacher a decade ago and he'd never really stopped being afraid of her. "It won't happen again, I promise."

She sniffed, but retreated, door snapping closed behind her. "Old bat," he muttered, and continued on to Gaila's door.

He knocked much more lightly than he might have otherwise, and it shifted inward under his knuckles, not quite latched in place. It brought him up short. "Gaila?" he called, softly.

Only silence greeted him, and trepidation ran like icewater down his spine. He touched the door again and pushed it inward, slowly. "Hey, Gaila?"

Light from the streetlamps swept across the floor, illuminating everything inside with a pale orange glow. He didn't even get it open all the way before he was rushing inside, skidding through the pooled blood and dropping to his knees beside the figure reaching mutely out to him from the linoleum floor. "Oh God, oh God oh God— help! Mrs. Colt!"

He'd only seen pictures of Janice and Marlene; the murders had happened out of the county and professionally weren't his responsibility. It was different, brushing back Gaila's sodden hair from her face and hearing her gasp wetly for air, her bar uniform slashed to bloody ribbons across her chest and collar. "Mrs. Colt! No, no, don't try to talk, baby, just stay still, okay?"

Gaila's eyes were wide and glassy with pain, but she clutched weakly at his sleeve and rasped something, face imploring him to understand. He could only stare down at her as her lips shaped one three-syllable word, over and over.

"Jim? What's— dear _Lord_ —"

"Call 911," he ordered tersely, already reaching for his own phone and hitting speed dial. "She needs to get to a hospital as soon as possible."

Bones answered his phone after a single ring. "Jim, so help me God—"

"Gaila's been attacked," he cut in. "It'll be fifteen minutes at least to get an ambulance down from Iowa City, can you—?"

"I'm coming," Bones said, and hung up.

Two minutes later, Gaila was slipping into unconsciousness and Bones burst in, shoving aside the small crowd of neighbors milling around the open door. Before he'd even finished kneeling he snapped, "Towel, sheets, now," and Jim ran for them while he took Gaila's hand and crooned, "Hey, darlin', it's Len. I know you're tired, but I need you to stay awake, stay with me, that's right."

When they'd met three years ago, Bones had been on an extended leave of absence from a seven-figure salaried position as trauma surgeon in Atlanta. It had taken a few days and several bottles of whiskey, but Jim had managed to coax out most of the story: Bones worked too much, saw Jocelyn and their baby girl too little, and by the time he'd realized the danger and applied for that leave of absence, the damage had been done. One hellish divorce and custody battle later, Leonard McCoy fled the state on a Greyhound going north, with the vague idea of visiting cousins in Montana. He'd met Jim, instead.

He still worked as a surgeon, but a small-town hospital like Mercy General saw a lot less trauma than Atlanta. Still, by the time the EMTs arrived, Bones had most of the bleeding stopped and Gaila was still partly lucid. She kept repeating that single word, hand curled in Jim's sleeve and her eyes staring beseechingly into his.

A blonde EMT with the name CHAPEL on her lapel had Gaila loaded onto a gurney and out the door in under a minute. What looked like half the neighborhood had gathered around the house by this point, though Sulu and Finnegan had shown up and were in the process of cordoning off the area. Sulu caught his eye and nodded towards the duplex, eyebrow raised in silent question. Jim waved him off and followed Bones to the ambulance, where the EMTs had already lifted Gaila into the back and under Bones' supervision were beginning IV drips.

"Let's get this boat moving," Chapel said, pulling herself up and into the bay. "Doc, you riding with us?"

"Yeah, Jim too," Bones said, moving to follow her.

A voice behind them coughed and corrected, "No."

Jim looked back, and there stood Agent Komack, impeccable suit and composed expression apparently unhindered by the late hour and press of people surrounding them.

"I'm afraid Miss Vro will have to continue on alone. The two of you will be riding with me."

Flabbergasted, Bones stared blankly at the man. "And just who the hell are you?"

"Jump in or get left, Doc," Chapel said urgently, braced against the ambulance's door.

Komack reached into his jacket and flipped out his badge. "FBI, Agent Komack."

"Dr. McCoy?"

"Take her," Bones said in disgust, stepping down and back.

"But—" Jim began, and turned in time to see the doors swing closed on Gaila's blood-streaked face.

But not before her lips shaped those same three syllables.

* * *

"More coffee, deputy?"

Jim lifted his head and looked at Komack, too tired to muster a glare. "Just how much longer am I going to be here?"

The man shrugged, easing into the seat across the table. Behind him Jim's reflection stared back from the two-way mirror, eyes shadowed and sullen, mouth pressed in a tight, angry line.

Komack had opened a folder on the table and was leafing through it lazily. Morrow had done the same thing when Jim had first been brought to the interrogation room— not their own at the county seat, but one of the moldy old rotboxes at the Iowa City PD. Three hours later and Jim was still there, the dried blood flaking off his arms and onto the polished Formica surface of the table.

"The events as described by Dr. McCoy and Mr. Kirk are thus," the agent said eventually, for the benefit of the camera and recording devices behind the mirror. "Two pm: Gaila Vro leaves 1055 East 130th Street, the Kirk residence, having spent the night with James Kirk. Mr. Kirk, did you engage in sexual relations?"

"Yes," Jim said through his teeth.

"Would you say that you and Miss Vro are dating, Mr. Kirk?"

"No," he said curtly, just as he had the first and second times he'd been asked the question. He didn't owe the fucking FBI any explanation of his love life.

"Would you say that Mr. Spock and Nyota Uhura are dating?"

_I think you have perhaps misunderstood something._

"…no."

Komack only nodded. "At approximately three thirty pm, Miss Uhura called the Kirk residence, and communicated to you, Mr. Kirk, that she would like you to accompany Miss Vro to work. Both Miss Vro and Miss Uhura are employed as waitresses at the establishment known as Scotty's Bar and Grill, correct?"

"Correct."

"And this same establishment was the site of a vampire attack two nights ago, the night of the seventeenth?"

"Attack on a vampire," Jim corrected.

Komack steepled his fingers. "Was Miss Vro in any way involved in this attack?"

Jim leaned forward, voice rough and angry as he said, "No. As far as I know, she'd hardly ever seen Spock. Or the Craters for that matter. Now, I would be very much obliged, _Fed_ , if you would cut the crap and let me out of here so I can go to the hospital and see how she's doing."

"In her statement," Komack continued, as if Jim had never spoken, "Miss Uhura says that she introduced Mr. Spock to Miss Vro two weeks ago, after making Mr. Spock's acquaintance at her place of work. Is that true, to the best of your knowledge?"

" _Yes,_ " Jim responded, beyond annoyed.

"And you yourself first met Mr. Spock last night, in the course of the attempt on his life?"

Jim let the question hang a little too long, and the agent lifted a brow. "Yes or no, deputy, was that your first meeting?"

"Yes," he said, and the lie didn't even sting.

"And according to your account of the incident, Mr. Spock left the scene before he could be detained and questioned."

"…That's correct." _He was the_ _ **victim**_ _,_ Jim thought viciously.

The agent flipped the page. "The morning of the twentieth, the perpetrator of that attempt was found dead less than half a mile from your home."

Komack paused there, as if waiting for elaboration. When Jim only sat silently he moved on. "On the evening of the same day, Miss Uhura reports that Mr. Spock visited your home. How would you characterize that visit?"

Jim gritted his teeth. "Friendly."

Komack tapped his pen against the paper. "And Mr. Spock didn't do or say anything that would lead you to believe he was responsible for Mrs. Crater's death?"

"No."

The agent tilted his head, an expression of polite disbelief in place. "And you don't find it a strange coincidence?"

"I don't know what you want from me!" Jim exclaimed, shoving back from the table. "I've answered all of your questions, and all of Agent Morrow's questions. The answers won't change."

"We're just trying to build a complete account of events, deputy," Komack said. His tone was probably meant to be soothing, but came across as snidely patronizing. "I'm sure you recognize the necessity, with two women dead and another gravely injured."

"I recognize the necessity of knowing when I'm being dicked around with and demanding my attorney," Jim snapped, and moved to stand.

Komack held his gaze. "I find it very interesting that the one common thing that connects these three women, apart from locality, seems to be you."

Brought up short, Jim stared at him. "What?"

Komack gave him a thin smile. "We have serial killer on our hands, Deputy Kirk. Now, with such high marks at the academy," he tapped another folder lying in front of him, "I'm sure you understand basic profiling. If victims are young white females from middle-class backgrounds, how likely is it that the killer in question is a young white male from a middle-class background?"

"You can't seriously _—_ " he began hotly, but Komack rolled right over him.

"Of course, this killer emulates vampire kills." A pause. "If he is not, in fact, a vampire himself. Mr. Spock remains another viable suspect in that regard, especially when you consider that all three victims were known to associate with vampires, and, in Miss Vro's case, Mr. Spock in particular."

Jim opened his mouth to protest, and realized he had nothing to base his defense on. He had no proof that Spock was innocent, and first-hand knowledge that the vampire could and would use glamour, would kill.

And Jim had said yes to him. Jesus.

"Last but certainly not least, there is your friend Dr. McCoy."

" _What?_ " Jim blurted, shocked out of his spiraling thoughts. "You can't be serious."

Komack smiled more broadly, sly and malicious. "Tell me, are you aware of the circumstances under which he regained custody of his daughter?"

"It was hardly a secret," Jim said. "The courts ruled Jocelyn an unfit parent."

"Yes. For reasons of unsafe lifestyle changes."

He wondered where the hell the agent was going with this. "Yeah, so Joss started drinking and hanging out with the wrong crowd. So what?"

"The former Mrs. McCoy's unsafe lifestyle change was her decision to date a vampire," Komack said, eyes narrowed faintly and boring into Jim's. "The sole change she made, I believe. But that was enough for Dr. McCoy to file, and for the courts to rule in his favor. And who's to say they aren't right?" The man leaned forward, that wolfish gleam entering his eye. "Anybody easy or desperate enough to fuck a vampire probably deserves what they get."

Jim surged up the table, slamming his hands down on the open folders in front of the agent. "We are done here," he said, low and venomous. " _Done._ If you have nothing to hold me with, I am leaving and I'm taking Bo—Dr. McCoy with me."

Komack inclined his head. "It is your constitutional right to refuse questioning without a subpoena."

"Damn right it is," Jim said.

Komack made a great show of shuffling and tucking pages back into their folders. "As you leave the station, though, I'll have to ask you to leave your badge and gun. You're suspended from duty until this case is closed."

" _What—?_ I don't answer to you," Jim snarled. "The sheriff is the only man who can take my badge." Pike would never agree to it, either.

"Sheriff Pike is missing," Komack said, watching him steadily. "And the undersheriff has agreed that while you remain under investigation, it's best that you're removed from the process."

Ignoring for a moment the laughable irony of being benched by _Cupcake_ , Jim said, "Pike's missing? Since when? What happened?"

Komack's gaze dropped back to his papers. "Yes. Since last night. No one knows what happened, or he wouldn't be missing."

"But— are you looking into it?"

Komack snorted. "Mr. Kirk, we're looking into everything."

Jim's mind was racing now, trying to think back to the crime scene and what direction, what car the sheriff had left in.

"I suggest you take the opportunity to leave, before I do find something to charge you with," Komack suggested without looking up. "With your record, it shouldn't be hard."

"Fuck you," Jim said shortly, and slammed the door on his way out.

* * *

Bones was waiting for him in the deserted lobby, looking worn out and grey around the edges. He was reading a copy of the Iowa City Press-Citizen with a headline shouting "UNDEAD AND UNWANTED". The photo was of picketing crowds outside a building Jim recognized as Fangtasia, black siding and red neon looking even more garish and campy in broad daylight. In the sidebar there were small headshots of Marlena and Janice, and reeking of hysteria, the question "VAMPIRE SERIAL MURDERS?"

"Hey." Jim sat next to him. Bones squinted tiredly at him before yawning and folding the paper closed.

"Hey, you sorry sumbitch." The Georgia drawl always came out more when Bones was tired.

"Have you been out here long?"

Bones yawned again, hand over his mouth. "Mmmm, not too long. They accuse you of murder?"

"Yeah."

Jim wanted to ask Bones why he hadn't told him Jocelyn was dating vampires. It seemed like the kind of thing that, after the '09 anti-discrimination laws passed, she might have tried to have overturned— the woman was a lawyer, after all. But the man hadn't so much as mentioned her in months.

Bones put a hand on his arm. "Called the hospital. Gaila's still unconscious, but stable. They think she'll make it."

Something in Jim eased with that, and he managed a weak smile. "Thank God."

"Have been." Bones grinned too, soft with fatigue. "Ny's with her. Scotty closed the bar early and drove her out there."

"Hm," Jim said as they fell in step. "Think something's going on there."

"What? Nyota and Scotty?" Bones looked at him, eyebrow raised. "I thought she was seeing that vampire."

"Uh—" _A kiss like summer lightening, like a burning ember_. "I think they're just friends."

Bones' face darkened, a small change Jim wouldn't have caught if he hadn't known the man so well. "Hard to be friends with something that wants to eat you, Jim."

_Will you come to me?_

Jim had to physically shake off the memory, and the sudden feeling that he was missing a very important appointment. The smile he offered Bones now was bright and fake. "Hey, we'd better get out of here before they change their minds, right? Taxi's on me this time."

* * *

It was closing in on four in the morning by the time Jim dropped Bones off at his apartment and drove back to the Kirk farmstead. He entered the house, grabbed a flashlight from the utility drawer, and was back out the door before the screen had stopped swinging.

It wasn't precisely that he intended to confront Spock, or that he was so eager for a continuation of the kiss— although that was twisted up in it too. His mind roiled now with an uneasy mixture of curiosity, suspicion and fear, a combination that had never failed to draw him in before.

Jim wanted… he just wanted to see Spock. That was all.

He walked south on the edges of the sloped drainage channel, a narrow stripe of ditch weed between waist-high fields of corn. The moon was new and the rain from the night before made the ground soggy, but he managed to pick his way across and in ten minutes had reached the old family cemetery that separated the Kirk farmstead from the Grayson place.

The stones here were weathered and nearly illegible, spotted with lichen and moss where they stood under the trees that ringed the graves, maybe fifty by fifty feet of unkempt grass and clover.

In daylight it was a lonely place, full of the sense of things lost and forgotten. At night, it was creepy as all motherfucking get-out, and his grip on his flashlight tightened to the point of pain. As children, Sam and Jim had played here more times than he could count, scared shitless and jumping at every twig snap and skittering animal in the overgrown rosebushes. He passed through as quickly as possible, almost tripping on one of the crying cherub markers near the far entrance and righting himself with a curse.

He was surprised, once he emerged from the woods and onto the Grayson property, that it actually did look like someone had been working on the place. A lot of the saplings and underbrush had been cleared from around the house, and raw earth and timber showed where he remembered outbuildings standing. He kept his flashlight on his feet and followed tire tracks right up to the front porch.

The house looked much the same as it had when Jim had been a kid and an abandoned building had been the best kind of playground. The stairs and most of the veranda had long since rotted away, but were easy enough to scale when you were ten and nimble as a monkey. It was a bit trickier, now. He had to heave himself over the edge and crawl forward as the old plank wood groaned and swayed threateningly under him.

Plywood remained in place of windowpanes, and it occurred to him that Spock might prefer that. He'd said he was remodeling… what would a vampire-designed house look like? No windows would mean better protection from the sun. No kitchen, because vampires ate on the hoof, as it were. Maybe just a standalone fridge for the synthetic plasma crap and donations? Hell, probably no bathrooms either. Or only a single tiny powder room for the occasional human guest.

Jim reached the front door eventually, skirting carefully along with his hands braced against the house and the flashlight in his teeth. He had to hold himself at an awkward angle to reach the door, but he managed to get close enough to knock, and waited.

And waited.

Patience was never a virtue of his, and prudence even less so; after he knocked again and no one answered, Jim stretched to try the knob. The door swung inwards with a shriek of rusted hinges, and Jim edged gratefully into the deeper darkness of the house.

"Hello?" he said, sweeping his flashlight across the room. Dusty photos, peeling paint and yawning black doorways were briefly illuminated. "Spock?"

Somewhere beyond the beam of his light, there was the faintest rustle of fabric. That was Jim's only warning before a pallid hand shot out and gripped him by the throat, pulling him forward into the room.

Jim threw his weight backward and the hand only tightened further, until he could feel cartilage shift and crackle. The flashlight dropped from his fingers and rolled across the floor, illuminating one wall of distressed fleur-de-lys papering and a moth-eaten sofa while he struggled wildly against whoever held him.

Out of the silent dark, a disembodied voice asked, "How does this creature come to call you so familiarly _, sa-kugalsu_?" It was female, disinterested, and _vampire_. He would recognize that timbre anywhere, the way the words seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

"Release him." Spock may have been commenting on the weather for all the emotion in his voice, but there were undertones that eddied around Jim's awareness as _threat_ and _danger_ , and Jim's eyes darted wildly around the room in search of him. "He comes by invitation, as you yourself did not."

The hand around his throat dug in so viciously that Jim started twisting against the pressure like a stray dog on a catchpole. "No human must know of your resting place. It is one of the first tenets of Surak."

Jim's head was swimming from the lack of oxygen, but his eyes were adjusting to the dim light now; an unmoving shape in the corner he had taken for furniture suddenly resolved itself into Spock, looking as wooden as the chair he sat on. Jim collapsed slowly to the floor, and the vampire's fixed expression never wavered.

"The first of Surak's tenets is to offer violence to no living thing. You forget yourself, T'Pring."

"He brings a weapon," the female vampire countered. Jim could see his captor a little better now as well, enough to be shocked at the ease with which she held him. She was as fair and dark-haired as Spock, but where Spock was tall and lean with muscle, T'Pring was small and delicate, her features sharp and beautiful in their inhuman perfection.

Spock lowered his head an almost imperceptible amount. "His position in human society is such that he is often armed. I repeat, release him."

Something throbbed like it might snap in his throat, and spots ate across his vision. What if T'Pring didn't release him? Would Spock sit there and watch him die?

Another voice rang out in the room, soft as a whisper but striking Jim's ears like hammer blows. "What is this human to you, Spock? Have you fallen so far that you feed as your ancestors did?"

Jim nearly choked on his own startled exclamation as a third vampire materialized at T'Pring's side. He had been standing there the entire time, Jim realized, his shape distinct and obvious against the deeper darkness. Yet Jim hadn't seen or sensed him at all.

Still sitting across the room, Spock looked, if anything, bored. "No living blood has touched my lips since last I felt the fire."

The hand on his neck flexed, wrenching a tiny sound from Jim. The roar of his own blood in his ears threatened to drown out the third vampire's response. "Then you cannot have reason to refute the necessity of—"

One moment Spock sat in the chair, and the next he loomed in front of them. His eyes were terrifying, black holes no light escaped from. " _He is mine."_

The words sank into the room like stones dropped in a well: impassive, implacable, echoes rippling out in waves over an undercurrent of deadly intent.

The pressure around his throat disappeared so suddenly that Jim fell backwards, collapsing at Spock's feet. The vampire shifted as if to steady him, but that lethal edge was still vibrant in Jim's head and his body jerked away from Spock's touch instinctively. He stayed sprawled on his side, wheezing in panicked gasps, as his fingers found the grip of his gun and clung there.

From the flashlight's weak beam against the opposite wall, Jim could see that they were in what had once been a sitting room, stairs to the right, an ancient moldering grandfather clock standing against the wall. The hardwood under his knees was warped and knobby with age, the wallpaper pattern barely discernable under decades of dust.

The room was empty now, but for Jim and Spock.

Jim looked around wildly, trying to find any sign of where T'Pring and the male vampire had gone, panting into the rough wood floor.

Spock took a step towards him. "Don't," Jim rasped out. "Don't move." He brought the gun up, the fine trembling in his hands make it waver.

"James," the vampire murmured, still and solemn. "Calm yourself."

Jim let out a shaky, harsh laugh, looking down the barrel at Spock's blank face. "Calm myself? The _fuck_ I'll calm myself, what the— what the hell was all that?"

His voice sounded like he'd put his vocal chords through a meat grinder, and his throat ached and stung when he breathed. He coughed, and then couldn't stop, trying to keep the barrel level even as he curled in on himself. The liquid he coughed onto the floor was dark and viscous in the dim light.

A touch to his shoulder and Jim jackknifed up, Spock's grip firming when he tried to jerk away. "Calm yourself," the vampire said again, and his hand slid to cup the nape of Jim's neck. His eyes were brown again, brown and somehow soft.

Oddly enough, it helped. When his chest wasn't heaving, his throat throbbed less, and as his breathing steadied the raw panic quieted, too.

"Okay," he breathed. "Okay. What the hell just happened?"

Spock's brows drew together as he parsed this question. "You desire explanation of T'Pring's actions."

Oh God, laughing _hurt._ "Yeah. Yeah, that'd be nice."

Spock sat back on his heals, letting his fingers slide from Jim's neck to stroke gently along his collar.

"In order to live amongst humans in peace, vampires of my clan follow a strict code of conduct, put forth by our chieftain in the fifteenth century _anno domini_."

"Surak," Jim murmured, and Spock nodded.

"Yes. He was a great man, and a farseeing one. He saw we could not live as we were, as mad wolves in the pasture, or we would surely be hunted to extinction. Those who followed him, who tamed the fire, were called Vulcan's sons."

"The fire?"

"Bloodlust. It… comes on us much like a flame. We are consumed."

Spock was looking at Jim's lips, and Jim realized he could still taste blood in his mouth.

"The invention of synthetic blood was a boon like no other to us, for now no creature need be harmed to feed our appetite. Vulcan society as it now stands abhors the taking of human companions for nourishment when there is a viable, nonviolent alternative. This is why T'Pring was discomfited by your presence." Spock's voice grew deeper with each word, until it had reached a basso purr. Jim shivered, feeling the vibrations under his skin.

"James," Spock sighed, and leaned closer to him, eyes fixed on the quick dart of his tongue as Jim wet his lips nervously. "You are injured."

"Spock, wait," Jim tried to say, but then Spock's own tongue lapped at the same spot. " _Oh._ "

"James," the vampire said, this time with a note of urgency. "I— wish… I would like to kiss you, again. May I?"

"Hngh," Jim managed, whole body shuddering as that urgency translated to a sensation like a long, slow stroke of cool fingers up his spine. God, that _voice_.

"Yes?" Spock's hands were on his hips now, thumbs rubbing tiny circles in the hollows, and there was a reason why this was a bad idea but Jim was having a hard time remembering it.

Spock pressed a small kiss to the dip of his chin, and Jim gasped, "Yes."

It started with the softest contact, Spock's mouth brushing against his almost sweetly. Spock's tongue flicked out, wetting the seam between Jim's lips, and Jim moaned and parted them, reaching for that teasing tongue with his own.

The kiss deepened, and Spock's softness gave way to avid hunger, delving into Jim's mouth as if determined to map every inch of it. Jim sucked lightly, and was rewarded with a strangled groan as Spock pressed him back to the floor.

Like this, it was even better. Spock's hands slid up Jim's sides to cradle his head as he bit at Jim's mouth. Jim wrapped his arms around those thin shoulders and tried to remember if anyone had ever kissed him like this, like they wanted to crawl inside him and never leave.

Spock drew back a tiny distance and Jim blinked dazedly. "Wha…?"

"You are injured," the vampire said, and bit his own tongue.

At the first drop of blood on his chin, Jim's eyes opened wide and he said, "Spock, wait."

The vampire didn't seem to hear him, already swiping his bleeding tongue across that small drop and spearing into Jim's mouth again, where the coppery sweetness exploded across Jim's palate. Jim let out a shocked sound, his hands sliding up to fist in Spock's hair. He pulled the vampire down, hard, to chase after that taste like liquid gold across his tongue.

Spock's body collapsed onto his, startlingly heavy for his size. It barely registered above the heat Jim could feel building in his body, the low pleased noises he could feel more than hear as he suckled at the small wound. It was healing too quickly, and Jim sank his teeth into Spock's lower lip with a mindless growl.

Spock shuddered against him, pressed closer, and whispered, " _Drink_."

Jim blinked, and snapped back into himself. "No," he panted, twisting his head away. "Damn it, let me go!"

He shoved at the vampire's grip until Spock's arms loosened enough that he could scramble backwards until he hit the wall, breath coming hard and fast.

Spock crouched in the middle of the floor, eyes drowningly dark. "No?" he asked.

The room was getting lighter, and a quick glance to the window confirmed that dawn was mere minutes away. Thank God. "I can't do this. _I_ _will not do this_ , Spock."

Spock sat slowly back, absently licking at the sluggishly bleeding mark on his lip. Jim looked away.

"… I do not understand," the vampire said, voice low enough to raise all the hair on the back of Jim's neck. "You do not wish to— to kiss?"

Jim laughed brokenly, and it was pain-free. "I want to kiss you more than I want to keep breathing," he confessed, and rose unsteadily to his feet. "But I can't." Jim's gun was on the floor by Spock's hand. He'd have to leave it, because if he didn't leave now he never would.

Spock looked up at him, confusion writ large in his uncharacteristically open expression. "James. Please explain."

"I'm sorry," Jim said, and turned and fled out the door into the brightening blue of the summer dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author Note:**
> 
>  
> 
> New minor characters! [J.M. Colt](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/J.M._Colt) was Captain Christopher Pike's yeoman in the unaired pilot of TOS. [Christine Chapel](http://Chapel%20%5Bhttp://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Christine_Chapel) served under Bones as the head nurse aboard the Enterprise.


	6. Echo

It rained for weeks after that.

The forecasters who had been predicting a long drought and advising local farmers to look into irrigation equipment switched to 24-7 coverage of the rising levels of the English and Iowa Rivers. They interspersed images of volunteers stacking sandbags with photographs of the flood of 1924, when the river had climbed twenty feet and swallowed half of Riverside and all of River Junction.

On suspension, deprived of the opportunity to even work off his energy outside, Jim paced the house like a caged animal. He spent a lot of time in front of the television, but he'd never been the kind of man who could spend hours surfing through the sports channels, and adding insult to injury the only things in season were golf and NASCAR. The unrelenting rain and persistent _sameness_ of every single day were driving him slowly crazy.

He was two more Black and Lumpy meals away from committing matricide, but had a feeling his mother was much, much closer to killing him. She glared outright as he shuffled into the living room late one afternoon, fresh from a damp and pointless trip into town. In a placating gesture, he held out the bag of chips and salsa he'd gotten at the supermarket, and asked, "What's on?"

She continued scowling at him, but snatched the food from his hands and moved over just enough for him to join her on the couch. "Becka's mother just found out that her boyfriend is a vampire, and that he might have actually been her great-great grandfather before he was turned." Her look dared him to comment on her choice of television.

It was amazing how often the undead seemed to pop up, now that he was trying to avoid the subject at all costs. On television, in the paper, on the radio— popular culture was obsessed with the mystery of the vampire, and even in his own house he couldn't escape it.

Hell, even in his own _head_ he couldn't escape it. Jim had dreams now, horribly erotic nightmares that left him shaking with fear and coming in his sleep, gasping into wakefulness with the edge of ecstasy just barely fading. He wanted to see Spock. He never wanted to see Spock again in his life. Onscreen, Armand swept a swooning Becka into his arms and promised her his eternal, undying love, and Jim wondered what it would feel like to let himself be consumed.

Winona's voice drew him back into the present. "Jimmy?"

He blinked, and looked up. "Hm?"

"You okay over there?"

He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile and leaned back into the couch. "Uh, yeah. Fine."

Her glare hadn't quite subsided, but she did look concerned. "Nothing's bothering you?"

He lifted an eyebrow.

"Okay, maybe that's a stupid question," she admitted. "When was the last time you went out to visit Gaila?"

"Two days ago. No change."

Gaila had lost consciousness in the ambulance and had yet to regain it, almost two and a half weeks after the attack. Jim visited her on a fairly regular basis, and of course there was Bones, who worked in the hospital. Every time Jim showed up, Bones was there, flipping through her medical charts, reading to her, refilling vases and tending the potted plants people had sent.

"I work here, of course I'm here all the time," the doctor had blustered when Jim had mentioned his unusual dedication.

"Bones?" he'd asked, a light dawning. "Were you two…?"

Bones had just given him his patented _You're lucky you're so pretty_ look. "Might have been, if I thought she'd respect me in the morning. And I don't share, Jim."

Jim glanced up at the screen just in time to hear the music rise and see Armand's fanged mouth descend to Becka's bared neck. His hand clenched involuntarily, and the remote snapped in two.

"What the—" Winona started, getting up.

"Sorry, sorry," he muttered, gingerly opening his fingers and assessing the damage. "Damn."

That was another thing about vampire blood. After days of broken tools and crumpled sheet metal, it only took him one session with the weights he kept in the basement to finally realize that his body strength was roughly twice what it had been. He was looking better, too, and it wasn't his own vanity. Smiling at himself in the mirror, he looked like a poster child for eating your Wheaties or using Colgate: wholesome and healthy, hair a little more golden blond, skin smooth, blue eyes sparkling and bared teeth a bright, even white.

All from what probably amounted to less than a quarter-pint. Jesus _Christ._

"Jimmy, did you hurt yourself?" Winona asked, and Jim shook his head.

"No, just the remote," he said, letting the pieces fall onto the coffee table. "Guess we'll have to order a new one from the cable company."

Winona was still looking worriedly at him, and he hauled himself out of his well-settled cushions. He needed something to do, to work on. He always thought more clearly when he had his hands on something. "Think I'll head over to Scotty's, see what Ny's up to."

Apparently, Winona's worry didn't outweigh her desire to get Jim out of the house, or her concern for Nyota. "I hardly ever see that girl anymore," she huffed.

"She's going to school and working full-time, Momma. I'm surprised we see her at all."

Winona hadn't touched the salsa, so he grabbed it. There was a wide bowl of miscellaneous spheres made of twine and straw and metal next to it; he looked at it sideways on his way to the kitchen and decided he was calling a family meeting to talk about this blatant _decorating_ of his Man Cave. Spheres and settees, and the lamp made entirely of curly-cues he'd just noticed in the corner; what the hell were they thinking?

* * *

Jim spent as much time at Scotty's as he did at home these days. It had taken him a while to be able to shrug off the stares and whispers people made when he walked by— of course the whole town knew he was suspended and under suspicion for three murders; keeping secrets in Riverside was all but impossible and good gossip spread like a wildfire. There wasn't anything he could do about it.

He'd mentioned how angry and powerless it made him feel to Ny, once. She'd only looked at him and said, "Welcome to the club."

After that, it was hard to feel all that sorry for himself, and easier to just be angry at the world they lived in.

He pulled his truck around back, near where Scotty's trailer sat amidst a field of scattered engine parts, and nearly pissed himself when a massive shape with a mouthful of inch-long fangs leapt against the driver's side window, snarling with rabid fierceness.

" _Holy—_ " Jim reached for his absent gun even as his mind realized, _dog,_ and after some consideration added, _really really big dog._ The thing bayed like a hellhound and scratched madly at the glass, and his heart tried to climb out his esophagus.

A flash of white through the drizzle caught his eye, and Jim looked up to see Nyota crouch down in the open doorway, beckoning the dog away from the truck. Jim waited until the thing dropped below the window and was trotting back towards the bar before he risked opening the window a crack.

"Aren't you a good boy?" she was cooing, rubbing its sopping grey fur and laughing when it tried to lick her face. It was nearly as big as she was. "Such a good guard dog, such a good boy, yes you are. Jim, you should be fine now."

A weak, "What the fuck?" was all he managed, once he'd edged past the distracted beast and into the back hallway of the bar.

Nyota shrugged, the twitch of her lips betraying her amusement at his expense. "I think Scotty puts out food for strays. I used to see a little terrier from time to time."

"It probably ate it," Jim muttered, watching the dog lope away into the rain with its tail held high.

The first thing he did on entering the bar proper was make a beeline for his usual stool, tucked in a dark corner and half-hidden from the entrance by a complicated bit of carved wood paneling and the cash register. The second was order a neat double.

A neat double was somehow transmuted into something tall and virulently green, fizzing away in its glass like a third-grade science experiment. Scotty, who'd been out in the rain as well if his wet-haystack coiffure was any sign, set it down in front of him with a flourish.

"I wanted whiskey," Jim said stubbornly.

The Scotsman gave him a stern look. "It's three in th' afternoon, boyo. You're gettin' a phosphate, an' maybe a sandwich, an' liking it."

That was the danger of coming in to Scotty's during lunch hours. The man had a real thing for sandwiches (the more experimental and odd the better), and before Jim knew it he'd also been served something gooey with purple chunky bits. Scotty was smiling encouragingly over the bar at him, saying, "Go on, give 'er a try."

Jim held half the sandwich up to the light, eying it dubiously. "You're not going to tell me what's in this before I eat it, by any chance?"

"Jus' take a bite, ya big baby."

He made a face, and did just that.

"… mus'rooms?" he asked around his mouthful.

Scotty clapped his hands excitedly. "Yes! Specifically, grilled portabella in raspberry aioli with melted brie."

"This fetish of yours is disturbing," Jim told him, but he took another bite.

Nyota, who had come up while he was distracted by imminent sandwich-related poisoning, snaked an arm around him and grabbed the second half, taking a huge bite. "I looooove these," she said blissfully, spraying crumbs everywhere.

"No eatin' on th' job, missy," Scotty scolded, and she laughed and stuck her tongue out at him. Jim watched a pleased pink blush rise in the man's cheeks and mentally rolled his eyes.

Scotty bustled off, happy as a Scottish clam, and before Nyota could go back to her tables Jim put a hand on her arm. "Hey, can I ask you something?"

"Hm? Sure thing."

"Have you, ah…" He lowered his voice. "Have you heard from Spock? Lately, I mean?"

Her gaze went flat and suspicious. "Why? For the last time, Jim—"

He held up his hands. "I'm suspended, remember? I can't investigate jack. I just want to know."

"… he's fine, as far as I know," she said finally, still frowning at him. "I met him just last night, for help with my Swahili exercises. He's an amazing linguist."

"Yeah," Jim said distractedly. In his mind he was thinking of the lascivious _"Bet you'll have a talented tongue_ " he'd teased Nyota with when she'd declared her major. Thinking about _Spock's_ talented tongue did bad things to his blood pressure.

At that moment, the bell on the door jingled and Nyota looked up, her eyebrows shooting up before she grimaced. "Agent Asshole and Co., six o'clock," she muttered to Jim.

As she walked away to seat them, he turned a little in his chair so he could watch them come in: Komack and Morrow talking animatedly, Giotto trailing along behind them, Sulu and Chekov bringing up the rear, their long faces speaking volumes. Chekov glanced towards the bar, saw Jim and made point like a prize bird dog. Jim had to hide a grin behind his hand.

Sulu, a little more circumspect, followed the younger man's line of sight and gave Jim a subtle nod. He said something to Komack, then tugged Chekov with him towards the back corner, where another hallway led to the bathrooms, storerooms and Scotty's cramped little office.

Jim waited a few minutes, taking the time to polish off his sandwich and— phosphate? Didn't they stop making those in the fifties?— before meandering over.

Sulu and Chekov were waiting for him in the walk-in pantry, sitting at the wobbly old table where they sometimes played poker. There was a bucket on the table, to catch the rainwater leaking in through the ceiling. Here, out of the buzz of conversation, the sound of the rain was an audible low drone on the old roof.

"So," Jim said.

"So," Sulu agreed. "Feds are pretty much universally dicks, and Cupcake is a champion ass-kisser."

"Is like Russia," Chekov said gloomily. "FSB is KGB with new letters."

"Feats of ass-kissing the likes of which have not been seen since Hurricane Katrina," Sulu continued. "He could ass-kiss for England. Or arse-kiss, I guess."

"So, do you have anything to _tell_ me?" Jim prompted, folding his arms over his chest.

"Komack's still looking at you, and that vampire Nyota hangs around with. Speck? Spot?"

"Spock," Jim corrected absentmindedly. "What about Morrow?"

"He seems really hung up on Dr. McCoy. I mean, there's way less circumstantial evidence connecting him to the crimes, but apparently the doctor's ex-wife disappeared or something a month ago. He thinks it might be related."

Jocelyn had disappeared? It fed in with what Komack had told him, but Jim couldn't believe Bones wouldn't have mentioned it. "Have they found any new physical evidence? What about the stuff the CSIs collected, and Gaila's— kit, at the hospital?"

Sulu shrugged. "It's processing. DNA analysis has come back on Marlena, finally, and it's inconclusive."

"So useful, that DNA analysis," Jim muttered.

"Is one thing," Chekov mused. "The attack on Miss Gaila? Was different. Was at home, across threshold. Is hard for vampire to do, yes?"

"Yeah," Jim mused. "I wonder—"

The door to their impromptu meeting room was flung open, and Nyota rushed in, stopping short when she saw the three of them. "Oh," she said in surprise, then burst into tears.

Jim was moving for her before the door swung all the way shut. "Oh, baby. Baby, what's wrong?" he asked, gathering her into his arms.

"D-don't call me _b-b-baby_ , you chauvinist _asshole_ ," she sobbed into his shirt.

He kissed the top of her head and rocked her. "Okay, my darling self-empowered feminist. What's the matter, huh?" He glanced up to see that Sulu had frozen in that primordial male fear of _feelings,_ and Chekov looked as though he might start sympathetically bawling at any moment. _Some help you are,_ he mouthed.

Nyota never had been much of a crier; her sobs were already subsiding into unsteady breaths and the occasional hiccup. She rubbed her face a little harder into his shoulder, and sighed.

"Ny."

"What?"

"You'd better not be wiping snot on my clothes."

A sniffle. "Fuck you, Jim Kirk."

"Yeah," he said, smiling. "You wanna tell me what all that was about?"

"It's K-komack," she said, and Jim stiffened. "Someone told him."

He had a bad feeling, but he still asked, "Told him about—?"

" _Me,_ " she said miserably, and Jim immediately decided that Giotto was going to die in the most painful way he could possibly devise. His mind flashed briefly to James Bond with a laser aimed at his dick and Nyota laughed weakly, hiding her face in his chest a moment longer before lifting her head and looking at him.

"I've had people think nasty things around me before, but not deliberately _at_ me, _about_ me, and— he just— and Gaila is— I just _can't_ ," she moaned, eyes squeezing shut.

"Here's what I'm going to do," he told her, leaning in to put another gentle kiss on her forehead before motioning Chekov to bring a chair over and settling her down in it. "I'm going to go murder a federal agent in broad daylight, these fine gentlemen will help me chop the body into tiny pieces, and we'll feed him to the catfish once the river goes down. How's that sound?"

She gave another watery laugh. "That sounds wonderful."

The door opened a second time, and Scotty poked his head around the jam. "If ye're all done partyin' on ma dime—"

Then he caught sight of Nyota's tear-stained face, and the Scotsman's expression underwent a frankly terrifying transformation. "I'll kill 'em," he growled, and Jim jumped after him as he disappeared from the doorway.

He caught up just as Scotty reached the table where the agents and Giotto were seated, his hands clenched into tight fists. "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm gonna have te ask ye t' leave now," he said with admirable calm. "Dunna come back, or I won't be responsible for ma actions, ye ken?"

"Are you _threatening_ me, Mr. Scott?" Komack asked, as if genuinely interested. Jim put a hand on Scotty's shoulder to keep those fists at his sides.

Under Jim's touch, Scotty drew himself to his full height and said, "Y'might take it like tha', aye. If I ever catch ye… _talking_ to Miss Uhura like tha' again, there'll be consequences an' no mistake." His gaze was pure steel.

Komack held his eyes for another moment, then slowly rose, setting his napkin aside. Morrow, eyebrows somewhere around his hairline, followed suit, and the agents exited the bar to the general hubbub of onlookers.

Giotto remained, standing next to the table with his Smokey Bear in hand. "Would you tell Miss Uhura that I'm sorry?" he asked, gruff and awkward. "I didn't think— well. I didn't think he'd do that." _I didn't think she could really hear him_ went unspoken.

Jim let him hang for a moment, then said, "I'll tell her."

He gave a tight-lipped nod. "Thank you." He set the hat on his head. "And if you could remind Sulu and the Russki that they're on the clock, that'd be good, too."

Well, there was probably only so much niceness someone like Cupcake could handle without hurting themselves. "Go kiss ass, Cupcake. You do that best."

Giotto glared at him, but turned to leave. He paused, turned back, grabbed his half-eaten portabella-mushroom-raspberry-whatever sandwich, and after a thoughtful pause, the untouched sandwiches from the other plates on the table as well.

"It's good," he said defensively as Jim stared at him. Scotty looked slightly mollified and even pulled a bag out of his apron for Giotto to put the sandwiches in.

Sulu and Chekov were just emerging as Jim and Scotty headed back to the pantry and Nyota, and Jim stopped to talk with them as Scotty continued on.

"Dispatch just radioed us," Sulu said in disgust. "Old Man McCullough's barns again."

"That man needs a hobby."

Sulu snorted. "He's got one, didn't you notice? Anyway, we're out. And Jim," he said, lowering his voice, "We'll let you know if there's any important headway in the case, as much as we can. Just, don't go off on your own? This isn't a Die Hard movie, Detective McClane."

"Fine, Mom."

"Shut up, jackass."

Chekov watched them bicker with a happy smile, and popped in with a cheerful, "Motherfucker!" Jim and Sulu were surprised into outright laugher, and Chekov beamed.

They left, and Jim made for the back hallway with a fervent prayer to whoever was listening that the tears were done for now. He was opening the pantry door just as Scotty was saying in a rush, "—and after the meetin', if ye'd like, I was thinkin' we could stop at th' pie place. If ye want to. We dunna have to."

Nyota didn't look sad or weepy. She looked bemused, and scared, and a tiny, brilliant smile was flirting with the corners of her mouth. "That sounds lovely, Mr. Scott."

"Aye?" the Scotsman said with a note of surprise, before he recovered himself. "I mean, _aye_ , o' course it does. 'Tis ma plan, after all, and I've been thinkin' it over for ages." He colored. "Er, I mean—"

Nyota giggled, _giggled_ , and Jim shut the door as quietly as he could and grinned foolishly wide at the landscape painting on the opposite wall.

* * *

_Spock looks up at him from the warped floor of the Grayson foyer, the wood splintering and cracking underneath him. "Will you come to me?" he asks, just as it gives way and sends him plummeting into darkness. Jim scrambles back against the wall, but the floor is falling and Jim follows shortly—_

— _he's a child again, and he's in the old graveyard and he can't find Sam. Did Sam leave him here? He does that. He's such a bastard. The name on the grave in front of him is Spock Grayson, and the adult inside the child thinks, but that's not what's in the DMV database—_

— _and he lands, finally (he's been falling for ages_ _)_ _and Spock catches him, and smiles, and says, "You came." They're on a bed, and the bed is covered with rose petals or maybe those are bloodstains—_

— _Gaila answers the door in her uniform, black shorts and apron, and a green shirt emblazoned with "Scotty's!". She looks faintly puzzled but not scared and says, "Well, this is unexpected. What can I—?" and her eyes go comically wide as he reaches for her—_

— _and Spock lifts his head, his mouth red with blood and a dazed, heated look in his brown, brown eyes. "James," he moans, licking at his lips like they're coated in honey. "Please, please, let me."_

" _Yes, yes," Jim begs breathlessly, even though he knows, knows that if Spock takes any more—_

— _Spock bares his fangs, the delicate points of them gleaming in the low light, and when he buries them in Jim the fire consumes them both._

* * *

Jim jerked awake with a gasp, hand flying up to his neck. Under his fingers, a low burning throb ebbed slowly away, the skin above it smooth and unbroken. Unbroken. God.

He collapsed back onto the couch, panting, and winced at the all-too-familiar feeling of come soaking through his boxers. This was all so fucked up. Fucked. Up. He wasn't a fangbanger, he didn't get off on blood and pain and imminent death.

Except that apparently he _did_ , and his unconscious mind had latched onto Spock as a likely provider of all three— mustn't forget, after all, that even if Spock wasn't a freaking vampire there remained the whole murder suspect angle, as yet unaddressed.

" _Fuck,_ " he groaned into his hands.

"Jimmy?" Winona appeared in the doorway, in a dress for once and actually wearing heels. "Are you almost ready to go?"

"… let me change."

She scoffed at that. "You look fine, and we're already running late! There won't be chairs left and we'll have to stand—"

"I'll be just a second, okay?" he snapped in embarrassment, and rolled off the couch to find some clean pants to wear.

"What the hell crawled up your ass and died?" his mother yelled after him. "And for God's sake, if you have to piss do it quick."

"Stay classy, Momma," he yelled back, and heard her snort.

The social engagement of the evening was the much-anticipated town hall meeting, on the subject of whether or not the town was ready for its own Walmart, one link in a long chain of proposed superstores out by the highway. Real estate development was what passed for political intrigue in a town as small as Riverside, and so nearly all one thousand-odd residents had turned out to the elementary school's gymnasium. All four of the retractable bleachers had been extended, and a veritable sea of folding chairs covered the basketball court. The air had turned hot and close from so many bodies packed in, the doors open to tempt a breeze in only adding to the sticky humidity.

As Winona predicted, there were very few seats left, but as they passed the bleachers Bob Wesley popped up like a jack-in-the-box and insisted Winona take the seat next to his at the end of the first row. Jim stood next to her, with a hip braced on the metal railing.

The mayor had already started his introductory speech, and Jim let the man's strident tones and the busy hum of a hundred quiet conversations wash over him without penetrating. He scanned the room, picking familiar faces out of the crowd and cataloguing their positions.

Scotty and Nyota were near the front of the gym, sitting with their shoulders touching and knees angled towards each other. Jim watched as the man oh-so-casually stretched, letting his arm fall on the back of Ny's chair. Her head tilted in Scotty's direction, and he could only imagine the look on her face. The Scotsman gave her a sheepish grin and left his arm where it was.

Closer to the back of the gym, Sulu and Chekov sat together in civvies, heads close as they carried on a whispered exchange. He was glad to see that his partner had taken the new deputy under his wing; on top of the dull boredom and anger he felt over the suspension, there was also the lingering guilt of having abandoned the Russian to his own devices. Sulu was a good guy. He'd do right by Chekov.

Further down the same row Jim found the two FBI agents, and with them Giotto and Finnegan. The interim sheriff and deputy were focused on the mayor like good little public servants. Morrow was surreptitiously typing something into his phone. Komack's eyes were traveling restlessly over those assembled, much like Jim's, and as Jim watched something caught the agent's attention in a knot of people milling around the westernmost door.

The people themselves did nothing suspicious; they fidgeted, played with their hair, fanned themselves with the programs the Women's Auxiliary had printed. They wiped at their sweaty foreheads and leaned in to grouse to their neighbors about the heat. They shifted from foot to foot, side to side to ease the pain of standing for so long. Children darted through them and they parted and reformed around the giggling troublemakers like a school of fish.

Conspicuous by his stillness, a dark-haired figure stood at rigid attention in the center of all that movement. Across the gym and over the heads of the crowd, Spock's eyes met his and Jim gasped, the small sound swallowed by the mayor's final ringing point and a half-hearted round of clapping.

Jim tore his eyes away to see Komack rise from his seat, gaze fixed firmly on Spock's position. Spock saw him too, posture changing subtly as he registered the threat. To Jim's great surprise, however, the vampire elected to turn and walk away at a slow-to-normal speed, one which Komack had no problem matching. When Spock slipped outside the man was close behind him, and they disappeared from view into the darkening evening.

His curiosity thoroughly piqued, Jim wavered, torn. He'd been avoiding Spock and dodging Komack individually for weeks, so it made no sense to seek them out when they were together. And they might have a perfectly bland, cordial discussion; the most logical explanation for Spock's unspoken acquiescence and retreat was that he simply wanted to be interrogated privately. Perhaps so he could kill the man and make it look like a car accident. God.

"Be back in a sec, 'kay?" he murmured to Winona, and slipped out the nearest doors to follow the two.

A warm, muggy gust of wind accosted him as he stepped out into the blue twilight, sky the color of a deep old bruise. The oversaturated sod squelched unpleasantly underfoot. He leaned back against the school's rough cinderblock and fleetingly wished he still smoked, as Komack's unctuous voice came from just around the corner.

"—very hard man to track down, Mr. Spock."

"I must beg your understanding," Spock replied stiffly. "My current residence is being renovated and I do not currently have access to long-distance communication devices."

"Right," Komack said easily. "I've heard that you were new in town. Where're you from, originally?"

"East," Spock said succinctly.

"East," Komack repeated, voice losing none of it's good-ol'-boy charm. "Well, Spock, that's a little vague."

"If you know anything of my kind, you must know that we guard our homes well."

Komack chuckled. "As it happens, I'm something of an expert on 'your kind'. Part of the reason I'm here. But let's talk about you, Spock. Where are you really from? What're you doing here? We don't have many vampires running around this part of the country."

It was hard to gauge Spock's mood from his voice alone, especially when it was as flat and achingly civil as it was now. "The Grayson farm passed into my custody, and I had been looking to make a change in my life."

"You're mainstreaming." The agent pronounced the word like it was an insult.

Spock seemed unfazed. "That was my intention, yes."

"And how's that going?" Komack asked, tone verging on outright mockery. "Found a job? Make any friends?"

"You wish to antagonize me." There was no question, or even censure in Spock's voice, only a sort of polite interest. "Why?"

"Because, Spock, I find damn interesting when a vampire serial killer pops up in Bumfuck Iowa," Komack said, apparently tired of beating around the bush. "And it so happens that I've been tracking this little bastard from east to west. Back when my daddy was in the service I could have shot you where you stand and been hailed as a hero. Hell, they even had a medal for it."

They did. George Kirk had received thirteen such medals before his death resulted in a Purple Heart, all of which were collecting dust in a locked trunk in the attic.

"Not anymore, though," Komack continued, sounding wistful. "Now, I've got to prove _justifiable cause_ before I shoot you."

"I respect human law, and the law states that I have the same privileges and protections as any other American citizen, as well as the responsibilities," Spock said. "To that end, I will submit myself to questioning and other tests you may wish to perform, but I believe it would be best to end this conversation before it becomes any more… rancorous," he said carefully.

Jim listened, waiting for Komack to strike back, but to his surprise all he heard was a dry rasp of paper, and the man saying, "My card, for future reference."

"Thank you."

"Goodnight, Mr. Spock. Please expect to be contacted in the next few days for your interview. Don't skip town."

"Your colloquialism obscures your meaning, but I believe I understand you."

"Good."

There came the sound of grass squelching, and footsteps on the concrete sidewalk, moving away at a crisp, quick pace. Jim stood with his shoulder against the gray wall, and waited to hear a second set. But, would Spock deign to make noise? Unless that had been Spock stomping away just now. But Jim doubted it. It was hard to make steps sound petulant, but somehow—

"James?" Spock asked quietly.

Jim froze.

"You are there, yes?"

"Ah, yeah," he said, propping himself upright just as Spock peered around the corner.

Up close, the vampire looked more gaunt than Jim remembered, faint hollows in his cheeks and dark circles under his eyes.

"You don't look good," he blurted, and mentally kicked himself.

Surprisingly, Spock only nodded in response. "These past days have been trying. There is much to be done with the house, and I must continue to play host to T'Pring and Stonn."

"They're still _here_?" Jim asked, glancing towards the dark treeline.

"You are in no danger," Spock said calmly. "I have made it clear that I would consider it a grave trespass should they harm you." Spock's possessive " _He is mine"_ echoed between them. "Even if I no longer hold any rank within the Vulcan clan, they will respect my wishes."

Jim pushed himself away from the wall and ambled idly in the direction of the soccer field. "You said you wanted a change? From what, exactly?"

He was aware of Spock in his periphery, drifting along beside him with his hands clasped behind his back. "One rash act of emotionality on my part caused unimaginable consequences for my clan. It was decided that I should be exiled."

"That sounds nothing like 'I needed a change,'" Jim protested.

Spock was looking out over the town, over the rolling fields and beyond. "I left voluntarily. I was too ashamed to stay, after what transpired."

It was barely eight, but night came earlier under dense cloud-cover. The last of the weak sunlight faded out of the sky as they stood there, staring out at the horizon in companionable silence.

"And now you mainstream," Jim said after a time. "How's that coming?"

"…it is difficult," Spock said. "Much more difficult than I imagined it would be. Humans are so very peculiar."

Jim had to laugh at that, and Spock favored him with a strangely warm look.

"You, most peculiar of all," he added softly.

* * *

The downstairs lights were all on when Jim drove up to the farmhouse, meaning Winona or Nyota or both were home from the meeting. Jim wondered if that pie place date ever materialized Scotty, and then had the odd thought that he'd just been on something of a date himself— an awkward first date, with all the trimmings: sitting out under the stars, talking shit, loosing time, staring at each other's mouths and wondering if the other was thinking what you were thinking.

In the seat beside him, Spock looked serene and pensive, gazing distantly out the window and showing no sign of getting out. "Well, here we are," Jim said pointedly.

"Ah. Yes," Spock muttered, and proceeded to have the exact same problems getting the seatbelt off as he'd had getting it on.

"Oh my God, give me that," Jim said impatiently, and wrestled the buckle away from him. A vampire's truest weakness was safety harnesses, who knew?

They climbed out of the car, and Jim cleared his throat. "So, I guess I'll see you… around," he finished lamely.

The gracelessness of the comment was lost on the vampire, who had turned towards the house with a faint frown. "James..."

"What?"

Spock looked back at him, eyes troubled. "Something is wrong."

"What?" Jim glanced to the house, back to Spock's face. "What's wrong?"

"James. I smell blood."

Jim ran for the porch and of course he didn't have his gun, he'd left it on the floor when he ran away from Spock. That'd been weeks ago.

The threshold stopped and held Spock back but Jim flung himself across it and into the preternaturally quiet foyer. "Nyota? Winona?" he called, striding into the parlor, then the living room, casting glances all around. "Answer me, damn it!"

The kitchen, out of all the other rooms on this level, was dark. Jim's hand went automatically to the switch and there, for a moment, the only sound in the room was the low buzz of the florescent bulbs.

"Momma?" he breathed into the silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate this chapter SO MU-UH-UCH. Somebody tell me I'm pretty.


	7. I Am Not There, I Do Not Sleep

Jim was sitting alone on the front steps when Scotty and Nyota pulled up, something peppy and loud playing over the radio before the engine was cut. He watched bleakly as Scotty strode around to the passenger door and pulled it open with a gallant bow. Nyota laughed, and when he offered his arm with a flourish she took it.

"Eh, no shotgun?" the Scotman joked as they came closer. "Well, Da, I've brought th' lass home safe an' sound, no hanky-panky t'all."

Nyota, who knew him better, saw his face and was brought up short. "Jim?"

"… Don't go inside."

How could he tell her? How could he say those words, knowing they'd devastate her? She'd looked so happy, getting out of the car, happier than he's seen her in a long, long time. It wasn't fair.

She stepped up to the stairs and put her hand on his cheek, tilting his head up to hers. "What's wrong? Did something happen?"

He was saved from answering by the approaching wail of a siren, and then another rising to join it. Flashing lights appeared at the end of the drive.

Nyota looked back, then down again at him, eyes wide. "Jim, please, what happened?"

"It's Winona," he forced out, and then two cruisers and an ambulance roared into the clearing, spraying gravel everywhere as they crowded around Scotty's old Chevy.

It got a bit chaotic after that. As people entered the house Giotto herded Jim and Nyota back about twenty feet and made vague noises about going to the station, against which Scotty argued fiercely. Jim sat with Nyota on a wooden bench his father had built, her hand squeezing like a vise around his.

"Your boyfriend's a bit like an angry badger," he murmured, as Scotty shouted Giotto down with, " _An' ye can shove it up yer arse and keep it there_!"

She smiled, a miserable wobbling thing. "He'd be happy you think so."

Scotty stomped back to them, indignant rage in the mulish set of his jaw and the tensed line of his shoulders. "I've been given _permission_ from mister Grand High Pooba t'leave and take Nyota with me, but he says you're stayin', Jim. I'm sorry."

Nyota took a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm not leaving, not if he has to stay."

"Ny." Jim turned to her, their hands still linked. "Please. It would take a huge weight off my shoulders to know you were safe." And far, far away from here.

"I'm not some delicate flower," she said waspishly, though her voice broke over the last word. "And what about you? You can't tell me you're alright."

"I'll deal," he said, and took her muttered " _Men!"_ as a matter of course.

Between the two of them they wore her down, and Scotty's battered truck edged its way carefully out the tangle of emergency vehicles just as a black towncar pulled into the drive. Komack climbed out of the driver's seat and frowned after them, pointing at the retreating taillights when Giotto trotted up to greet him and saying something inaudible from where Jim sat.

Someone draped a blanket over his shoulders, and he looked up into Chapel's softly sympathetic eyes. "'M not cold," he protested.

"Just as a precaution, okay?" she coaxed, tucking the ends more firmly around his body. "Can't have you keeling over from shock."

Her hand rested on his arm for a bit longer than necessary. "I'm sorry for your loss," the EMT said gently.

Unexpectedly, it made his eyes sting, and he nodded. "Thank y—"

"Mr. Kirk!" Komack called, walking up the curved garden path towards them. "Another day, another crime scene, I see."

" _Cunt,_ " Chapel said under her breath, and when Jim shot her a startled look she gave him a firm pat on the shoulder and a discrete thumbs-up.

Komack's eyes were bright and sharp, his smile almost gleeful. "I think you'd agree, Mr. Kirk, that discovering two murders in as many weeks makes you incredibly unlucky or somehow involved. I'll be very interested to hear your explanation."

Jim stared up at him. "Agent," he said, as evenly as he could. "I came home to find my mother dead on the kitchen floor. I don't _have_ an explanation, although I would very much like to find one."

Komack made a show of pulling out a pad and pen, flipping it open to a fresh page. "Then why don't you start from the top, and we'll see if we can't figure something out?"

He made as if to sit down on the bench beside him, and Jim shot to his feet, grief and anger turning over in his stomach like roiling pitch. "How about you go _fuck_ yourself, you soulless bastard?"

Komack had the gall to look amused. "There's really no need for language like that. I just want to know what happened."

"In that case," Sulu said as he stepped up to them, "You can request access to our report when it's filed. The sheriff's office will be doing the questioning."

Komack gave him a condescending smile. "Deputy, I'm sure you recall that the FBI has been granted jurisdiction—"

"And I'm sure you're aware that until this murder is proven to be connected to those currently under investigation, the FBI has jack all jurisdiction," Sulu returned. "Sir."

The agent was frowning now. "Of course they're connected."

"Based on what evidence?" Sulu asked.

It slowly seemed to dawn on Komack that he did not, in fact, have a procedural leg to stand on. He blustered, "Of course, this early in the investigation—"

"Exactly, sir," Sulu said pleasantly, beckoning for Jim to rise and follow. "Now if you'll excuse us?"

He led Jim further away from the house, towards a squad car— _their_ squad car, Jim noted dully. Good old number 941.

Sulu sat him in the back and leaned against the open door, sighing heavily. "Jim—"

"Just take the statement," he said tiredly, wrapping the blanket around himself again. Funny, he did feel a bit cold. "Need to give it sometime. The sooner the better, I guess."

"Okay," Sulu said quietly. "Okay. But we can stop at any point, alright?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." Sulu took a deep breath, then found a pad and pen. He began, "Mr. Kirk, if you'll describe to me what you saw when you arrived home this evening..."

The formality helped. It made things seem more distant and unreal, like they'd happened to someone else entirely. He told the story of another Jim, who had walked in his front door and found his mother sprawled out over the linoleum with her neck quite visibly broken, blood seeping out of her mouth and eyes wide in eternal surprise.

He left out Spock, and his telling Spock to disappear before the police arrived. The vampire had only half-obeyed him. He was still lurking somewhere nearby; Jim could feel it if he let himself, a slight tug like the pull of a loadstone on his consciousness. Somewhere to the south, towards the Grayson farm, Spock watched and waited.

"— said there were signs of a struggle?"

"Hmm?" Jim refocused on Sulu's voice with effort. "Yes. A chair was broken and a drawer pulled out. The one she keeps—kept her service pistol in."

Jim glanced back toward the house, just at the moment when the paramedics emerged carrying a covered figure. Something hard and painful rose up in his throat.

"We can stop," Sulu offered again, and this time Jim gave a choppy nod.

"Yeah. I, uh. Shit," he said, letting his head fall in his hands. "I need to call Sam and Aurelan."

"Jim, I'm so sorry," Sulu said, and behind his fingers Jim's eyes went hot and achy.

"Thanks," he said gruffly. "It's just… can I get a minute?"

There was a crunch of gravel as Sulu stepped back. "Stay where I can see you?"

"Fine. Sure."

He didn't, though. It was too easy to wait until Sulu's attention was elsewhere, and slip out of the blanket and the backseat. Number 941 was parked close to the edge of the property, where Bob Wesley's sweet corn had grown chest-high in the constant rain. Jim walked away, and no one noticed or stopped him.

Storm-dark had turned to true dark, and it was mostly by feel that Jim found Spock, sitting on the crumbling stone wall around the graveyard. He put a hand out towards a lighter patch of dark in the night, and felt almost pathetically grateful when fingers tangled with his, and pulled him in.

Spock's collar was cool under Jim's forehead, his arms tight and sure around Jim's body as they gathered him close. It felt unspeakably good to be held; he could cry his damn eyes out if he wanted, and Spock wouldn't give a shit. The thought steadied him, and slowly the shaking stopped and his breath evened out.

The vampire was… crooning, for lack of a better word, low and sweet like Jim was a child or a wounded animal. The syllables slipped around each other, not English, not anything Jim had every heard before. Without opening his eyes or lifting his head, he asked, "What's that mean?"

Spock smoothed a hand up Jim's back, and translated. "'You are safe. I am here. Nothing will harm you while I watch over you.'"

That was… nice. It was a bit much— after all, Jim was a grown man, a sheriff's deputy with combat training and an ever-expanding gun collection.

But he didn't feel like a grown man, now. He felt orphaned, and small, and scared. Spock was a reassuring solidity under his hands, and here in the black of night, he could take that comfort without shame.

"God, Spock…" he whispered. "What hell is going on? Gaila, and my mom, and Janice and Marlena… what do they have in common, besides me? Who would… is someone trying to get to me? Is this my _fault_?"

Spock was silent for a moment. "It is possible," he allowed finally. "But unlikely. From what I understand, it is more probably a type of hate crime and your involvement coincidental."

Jim looked up, to where Spock's face would be if he could see it. "Hate crime?"

"Against those who associate with— vampires." The pause was tiny, but there, and Jim wondered why. "Tonight represents a significant deviation from the established _modus operandi_ , but this may be explained if we assume that the intended target of the attack was not in fact your mother, but Nyota."

"Oh my God," Jim said blankly. It made perfect sense, but Jim prayed fervently to whatever God was listening that the same thought never occurred to Ny. It would kill her.

"Oh my _God_ ," he said a little louder, pushing against Spock's grip. "She's still in danger. I have to warn her."

The arms around him refused to shift. "She remains in less danger than you."

Jim stopped, looking up at the spot where Spock's face would be. "What? What're you talking about?"

"I am saying, James, that Mr. Scott is not an inconsequential protector and that many people are now aware that you and I associate as well."

Jim gaped at him. "Okay, first, I am not a woman, and second, Scotty is a barkeeper with a gourmet sandwich addiction. How is that bodyguard material?"

"That is not my secret to tell," Spock said levelly. "And I am concerned that the perpetrator of these murders may see you as an easier and desirable substitute, when he is unable to reach Nyota."

"But—"

"Stay," the vampire murmured. "Stay here with me, until the dawn. Only do that, and I will find the one who took your mother from you. I swear it."

Jim wanted to struggle, to argue. But Spock's voice had dipped back into that hypnotic lower register and when he repeated, " _I swear it_ ," the harmonics stroked over Jim like a lover's lingering caress. His body went slowly limp in Spock's embrace, and the vampire guided his head back to his shoulder.

"Until dawn," Jim said drowsily, his eyes sliding closed.

He felt Spock nod. "While I am here, they dare not come."

And before Jim could ask who he meant, he was falling into the yawning maw of dark, dreamless sleep.

* * *

"But, murder?" Sam sounded out the word like it was in a foreign tongue. "In _Riverside_?"

Jim sipped his tar-black coffee and gave a grim smile. "We've got our very own serial killer. Betcha Kalona can't top that."

They sat opposite each other in the hotel room's tiny kitchenette, Sam fresh from a four-hour drive and Jim still trying to shake off the lingering effects of Spock's mind-whammy. He'd woken up on a bare mattress at the Grayson place, now smelling more like sawdust and fresh paint than rot and mildew. His gun was sitting on the floor next to him, with a small handwritten note laid over it. In a thin spidery hand, Spock had printed _Do nothing rash._

Obviously, he was coming to understand Jim very well.

Aurelan walked back into room from putting her two oldest to bed, her eyes bleary and red. "Well, that's done," she said unsteadily. "Georgie was a little fussy from the car, but Peter's been asleep the entire time. I don't even think he realizes we're not at home." Tommy, the baby, had stayed home with Aurelan's mother.

She came up to the table and Sam put an easy arm around her, hugging her to him for a moment. She leaned down and kissed the top of his head.

"I'm not sure when we'll be able to have the funeral," Jim said. "The house hasn't been cleared yet. It might be days."

"We'll be here, Jim," Sam said. "As long as it takes."

It took five days. There honestly wasn't much of a mess, but the bill the county CTS decon team sent was enormous anyway. Jim handed over his checkbook, and Aurlean took it and paid them. God bless her, she arranged and paid for everything: the coffin, the mortuary space, the headstone, the gravesite.

Going back to the house wasn't as bad as he'd thought. The kitchen floor was a little cleaner than it had been, and he'd had to take a few steadying breaths when he found Winona's heels in the living room, like she'd kicked them off on her way in. But Jim was good, doing great, until someone at the wake tossed away a container of Black and Lumpy to make way for one of the hundreds casseroles, Jello molds and sandwich platters people had brought to the house. He found it in the garbage can, and stopped and stared.

Nyota found him an hour later, sitting crosslegged on his bed and spooning up little chunks. "She was such a horrible cook," he mumbled, head bowed and resting on her shoulder as she rocked him. "I mean, seriously, I can't even tell what this is."

"I know, baby, I know," she said.

He gave a strangled laugh. "Don't call me baby, you feminist pig."

* * *

Spock disappeared.

Day by day, the Grayson house looked less and less derelict and more like a home, the porch torn down and built up, the drive paved, the plywood replaced by black glass. Spock wasn't there to see it happen, didn't come when Jim swallowed his pride and called out to him, and Jim didn't know what the hell to think. Even his dreams were free of Spock.

A part of him felt stupidly desperate to see the vampire, to hear his voice again. The urge was strong enough that he wondered if Spock had deliberately bent something in him, or if this quiet longing was another bullet point in the long list of vampire blood side effects.

It didn't help that the atmosphere in the county was, in a word, tense. After Winona's death, anti-vampire sentiment was running at an all-time high, and prominent vampires and vampire establishments all over southwestern Iowa were being mobbed and picketed, even bombed. Fangtasia, he read in the paper, was closed indefinitely.

A few more days went by, and Jim started imagining in lurid detail what might have happened to him. Drained by junkies, like Nancy Crater; euthanized by federal marshals under orders from Komack; driven out into the sun by one of the hundreds of vigilante groups that had sprung up in the last month.

He asked Nyota if she knew anything and instantly regretted it when her face crumpled; worries shared were worries doubled, and she'd hardly needed another thing to be upset about.

Jim waited. He worked on the Harley's body until it gleamed, got himself banned from Scotty's for the sake of his liver and whatever dignity he had left. He built potato guns with George III and endured Aurelan's strident disapproval. He wrote emails to distant cousins and great-aunts inviting them to the funeral, and received almost no response. Not that he'd expected much.

Jim waited. Spock didn't come.

* * *

"Riverside and Iowa City," Chekov recited, wiping at his sweaty forehead. "Bloomington. Lexington."

"Kingsport," Sulu added, down to a wifebeater and pants with the cuffs rolled up. He flipped rapidly through the records. "Before that, possibly Chattanooga."

"Almost in a straight line, east to west," Jim murmured, tracing the points with a fingertip. The three of them sat at a battered folding table in Jim's suffocatingly hot garage, heads in close together as they stared at the incident map the two deputies had spirited out of Komack's temporary offices. Even with the doors open for circulation, the corrugated tin walls made the garage into an oven. Sulu looked fine, if a bit sticky, but Chekov was gradually wilting like a snowdrop in a furnace.

"I've got another few possible in Atlanta, but these are just missing persons reports that fit the victim type," Sulu said, picking up another stack. "It does explain why Morrow's got such a hard-on for Doc McCoy."

"Why? Because he used to live in Atlanta?"

Sulu folded the pages back and held the stack up for Jim and Chekov to squint at. A black and white photocopy of a news clipping proclaimed, "HOTSHOT LAWYER MISSING IN ACTION".

"'More delays in the Delouise corruption trial. Attorney Jocelyn Treadway, sleeping with the fishes?'" Jim read aloud. Jocelyn. He'd forgotten. "That's right. They still haven't found her?"

"Missing since late April," Chekov, in charge of case notes, confirmed.

"Morrow had to have thrown this in his face," Jim mused, thinking back to the night Gaila was attacked.

"Yeah, but Leonard?" Sulu looked skeptical. "I'd believe Scotty before I'd believe the doc did it."

Jim smile came out a bit like a grimace, but it was more than he'd managed in days. "Apparently Scotty's some kind of secret badass, so maybe you're right."

Sulu snorted, just as Chekov started listing to the side. " _Hui_ ," he sighed, eyes rolling back in his head as he fell.

"Pasha!"

Thus, the meeting of the resistance ended with their youngest freedom fighter carried into the house in a dead faint, and left nothing but an uneasy feeling in the pit of Jim's stomach.

* * *

He woke up early on the day of the funeral, and listened for a long time to the sounds of birdsong and Nyota and Aurelan talking in the kitchen. George the Third was up and demanding Frosted Sugaroos, and was Aurelan explaining patiently that this house didn't have Frosted Sugaroos but that if he was good, they might get some from the store later. In the meantime, why didn't he have some eggs?

Jim slipped out the door without speaking to anyone, and went to visit Gaila.

The doctors were now hinting heavily that she might never wake up, body too traumatized and brain deprived of blood too long. It hurt, but in an oddly detached way. A man could only take so much before he stopped feeling the blows, and he was grateful for it. Even glad.

Jim bought her fresh flowers from the gift shop and took the stairs, twelve flights up. He walked around the corner to her hallway and met Komack coming from the other direction. The agent gave him a nod and a friendly smile, and Jim barely resisted the urge to smash the glass vase in his face.

Bones was sitting at Gaila's bedside, in almost the same exact position he'd been in the last time Jim visited, but his face was red with temper and his hand a white-knuckled fist around the bed's guardrail. A nurse puttered quietly in the corner, and while he made small talk and waited for her to leave it eventually occurred to him that she _wouldn't_ leave, not while they were still there. The sidelong glances she cast their way were equal parts suspicion and fear, her finger poised over the emergency call button the entire time Jim was in the room.

"Komack 'let it slip' that I'm a person of interest in the investigation," Bones said later in the elevator, tired and bitter. "Christ, Jim, I'm two steps away from suspension myself, on grounds of nothing but rumors. This town is ready to blow."

He made Bones come home with him, stopping only to pick up Jo from daycare, and fed them both huge plates of forty kinds of funereal casserole. Jo wasn't a baby anymore but it was hard to tell how much she understood, dressed in black satin and sitting quietly in her father's lap.

In at four, they went to the church. The service was short, the organist the same warbling soprano that had sung at all Riverside funerals since time immemorial. Jim was a pallbearer, along with Bones and Sulu, and Bob Wesley's boys. They carried the casket out to the hearse to the baroque strains of "On Eagles Wings" and drove the half-mile to the city cemetery, where Captain Winona Kirk of the U.S. Navy was buried in dress uniform, next to her husband. The government had wanted to bury him at Arlington, but they'd had to settle for erecting a life-sized statue. Here, he shared a headstone bedecked with stone roses with his wife of five short years.

It was a warm, blustery day, black dresses flapping in the wind like crow wings. The entire town turned out for the procession; social events were hard to come by in Riverside and murder was exciting from a distance. The priest, an ancient tortoise of a man, wheezed his way through a brief eulogy, and friends and community leaders came to the podium to speak about what a wonderful woman she's been, how kind, how loving. Komack and Morrow were sitting two seats behind Jim.

Nyota came up to speak, unfolding a piece of paper and smoothing it out on the pulpit with a trembling hand. "Winona Kirk was an amazing woman," she began, and for the first few sentences she managed to hold it together. Jim's heart sank as her words grew halting, her face slowly crumpling. _C'mon, Ny_ , he thought. _You can do this._

But whatever else she was hearing was enough to drown out his reassurance. She burst out, "You're all horrible! It wasn't like that at all! I— I can't take this anymore!"

After the funeral he and Scotty found her behind an evergreen hedge, sitting on a marble bench with her legs drawn up to her chest. "I hate this place," she said, watching damp-eyed and balefully as the procession of townspeople wound away from the churchyard.

The rest of the afternoon passed in series of illuminated moments and blank black patches, like a strobe light: Bones settling Jo in the guest bedroom and falling asleep on the Laz-e-Boy; Nyota, her mascara a lost cause, pulling Scotty away with her upstairs; Sam and Aurelan sitting in the den with their boys and watching cartoon after cartoon after cartoon.

Jim was content to sit alone on veranda's old porch swing, looking out at the rivers and taking long sips of lemonade, listening to the heavy drone of cicadas and ignoring the way his dress shirt stuck to his sweaty skin. He blinked, and it was night and Aurelan was asking him if he wanted any dinner. He shook his head, but sometime later a porkchop drowning in gravy showed up at his elbow anyway.

He waited for Spock, and fell back into a restless doze.

Some indeterminable time later, his eyes opened and he stared out into the dark yard with the unsettling certainty that he was being watched.

The crops were laid close to the house here, the edge of the field a bare twenty feet from where he sat. The fitful wind made rippling waves of the tassels and leaves. He let his eyes slip out of focus, taking in everything and nothing, until the rolling shadows coalesced into a slim human figure.

Jim didn't quite gasp, but his hand shook as he lifted Tiberius' shotgun, filled with silver shavings, from the floor beside him and settled it across his knees. His voice had gone rough as he slept, so his quiet "Hello?" emerged as a croak.

Silence.

He cleared his throat and tried again, louder. "Hello?"

Nothing.

"I know you're there," he said, raising the gun to his shoulder. "I can see you."

He couldn't be sure, not when he had to fight to keep his eyes on a black-on-black shadow barely distinguishable from the night around it, but he thought the figure sketched a mocking salute before melting back into the corn.

Unnerved, Jim slowly rose and began to edge towards the door to the kitchen, shotgun still trained on the spot.

"Get _inside_ ," a voice hissed, and Jim swung the barrel up and fired without thinking. The shot went wide as the shotgun was batted aside and a man loomed suddenly over him.

"Stonn," Jim realized belatedly, and the vampire's eyes narrowed.

"That name is not for you to use, thrall."

Jim swallowed hard, but asked, "What's going on? Was that you, out there?"

Stonn ignored him. "I am not so enamored of you as Sarek's childe, and have no pressing concern for your safety. I will not warn you again. _Get inside_."

"What's going on?" Jim pressed doggedly. "Why are you here? Where's Spock?"

But Stonn was no longer paying him any attention, head turned towards the fields and body poised for flight. "Inside," he ordered a final time, and Jim was suddenly alone. Nothing but his pounding heart and spent shell casing indicated Stonn had been there at all.

"Jesus," he whispered, and crept closer to the edge of the veranda, torn. Go inside? Go after the vampire?

"Jim?"

This time Jim did jump, spinning towards Bones' voice with the shotgun up and his finger on the trigger. The man eyed him warily from inside the screen door, still dressed in black slacks and a horribly wrinkled collared shirt.

"Shit, Bones, don't scare me like that," he panted, relaxing his deathgrip on the shotgun and letting it fall to his side. "I coulda killed you."

"I heard a shot," Bones said, and nudged the screen open with his shoulder. God bless him, but he'd gotten the Sig Sauer Jim kept in the top drawer of the gun cabinet and held it up, braced in a clumsy three-point stance and aiming in the vague direction of the moonlit crops. "You okay?"

"I'm _fine_ , give me that," Jim snapped, grabbing for the pistol. Christ, he'd loaded it. "I told you not to touch my guns until you got some training in." Jim thought he'd have known better.

While Jim popped out the magazine and checked the cylinder for bullets, Bones was still looking out over his shoulder into the dark yard. "Was that… Spock?"

He sounded strange, tone striving for conversational but failing by a wide, wide margin. Jim glanced up at him, guardedly; the man's face was pinched with worry and… something else. Something darker.

_Komack smiled more broadly, sly and malicious. "Tell me, are you aware of the circumstances under which he regained custody of his daughter?"_

_Sulu folded the pages back and held the stack up for Jim and Chekov to squint at. A black and white photocopy of a news clipping proclaimed, "HOTSHOT LAWYER MISSING IN ACTION"._

"No," Jim answered slowly. "Sorry. Thought I saw something, and overreacted."

Bones' expression cleared, and he stepped back to let Jim into the kitchen. "Thank God for that, then."

They moved into the dimly-lit room together, Bones continuing on towards the hall while Jim made very sure the door and screen were latched and locked. He wasn't sure what had just happened, with Stonn or with Bones, but it was the latter who was making his mind churn now. He didn't like where his thoughts were leading him.

"Hey, Bones?"

"Hm?" Bones looked at him questioningly.

" _They accuse you of murder, too?"_

With some effort, Jim shook it off. Not a chance. Not Bones.

He offered Bones a tired smile, and clapped a hand to his shoulder. "Just, let me get the air mattress out, alright? That chair is murder on the back."

* * *

Less than three hours later, Nyota burst into Jim's room wearing one of his old football jerseys and very little else, trailed by the massive stray dog from Scotty's. Jesus, Mary and Holy Joseph, in better light the thing looked even bigger.

"Jim! Get up!"

"What the everloving _fuck_?" he managed as he let her pull him upright and into the hallway, cringing away from the monster canine as it trotted alongside them. "What the hell is that thing even doing in my house?"

She shoved him into den, where the television was on and showed a roiling cloud of dense black smoke framed by bloody red flames. Firetrucks dwarfed by the blaze sprayed tiny streams of water at the base, but the fire only seemed to rage higher.

"— _unknown if many survived,"_ the announcer was saying. _"Police pulled several people from the building earlier, but we've been told it's now too dangerous to attempt rescue of others who may trapped inside."_

"That's _Fangtasia_ ," Nyota said in agony. "Someone put gasoline at all the exits."

Jim just stared at her, not quite making the connection between the burning bar and Nyota's horrified face. "Why would anyone be there? Wasn't it closed?"

"The vampires who run it and their human servants have rooms in the basement," she said, and he _knew_ that wasn't public knowledge. "Spock's brother is the owner. Spock might be—"

"Put some pants on and get in the car," he ordered. "You hold down the fort, Fido."

The dog let out a resounding bark in response, and Jim gave it a startled look before skirting around it to run for his bedroom.

He grabbed a shirt and pants, stuffed his feet into sneakers, and at the last second, felt around in his dresser for the joke badge that read "Bikini Inspector" in a ribbon across the shield, a favor from Finnegan's bachelor party.

Jim and Nyota ran out into the yard, and the dog arranged himself in front of the door, stern and upright as a stalwart tin soldier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No one really new, but there are a few people I forgot to point out before: [Janice Rand](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Janice_Rand), the first murder victim, was Captain Kirk's yeoman in the original series. [Marlena Moreau](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Marlena_Moreau), the second murder victim, was the 'captain's woman' in the mirrorverse (TOS episode [Mirror, Mirror](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Mirror,_Mirror_\(episode\))). [Robert Wesley](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Robert_Wesley), the Kirks' neighbor, was a Starfleet captain and later a governor of the planet Mantilles.

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be my 2011 startrekbigbang entry, but I was off being lazy and bad and generally worthless as a contributing member of fandom. :\
> 
> [AMAZING ART](http://sunryder.livejournal.com/10459.html) by sunryder  
> [FABULOUS FANMIX](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL73CD856C1A4E820B&feature=mh_lolz) by melooza


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